A Letter from the Chair

With a new year well underway, we wanted to stop and reflect on everything we achieved as a team during 2023, and the events that will shape the business moving forward.

In January 2023, Tom and I sat down and crafted a business plan for the year, beginning with tackling the longstanding beast in our business, which has been with us since our acquisition of H Foster in 2006. It's important to clarify that this "beast" is not a living entity but rather our accountancy software. In our wisdom, we also decided to introduce a new CRM in 2019. Unfortunately, the chosen system was not fit for purpose and, despite a considerable amount of time to the call centre, it has never worked effectively.

It was then that we made the decision to change software on both elements and, after a considerable amount of investigation, we identified a new system. However, the next problem was carrying the data over. Rolling the data over, warts and all, from the old to the new was not deemed to be a good idea, so we decided to input it all manually. No small task! Kirsty and Penny started first thing Saturday 1st July and worked flat out for 14 days to complete the task. All the while, H Foster continued to deliver an uninterrupted service.

The second major step we have achieved for the company is having a CSR report assembled. The report on our website lays out what we are about as an operation; our values and our vision as to how we see ourselves as an operation in the modern world. The CSR report led to us applying for an EcoVadis sustainability rating. In November, we received our certification and found out we had achieved GOLD, putting H Foster in the top 5% of companies assessed by EcoVadis. This was very timely as it arrived just before SCS Formulate, the UK’s largest event of its kind, focusing on raw materials, ingredients and formulation services used in creating personal care and cosmetic products.

The SCS Formulate show was great, we were incredibly pleased with the booth. It was an important show for us as we were launching an exciting new range of botanical Cellular Extracts from Australia’s leading phyto-tech company, NATIVE EXTRACTS, that has evolved the botanical extract industry and natural ingredient category over the last decade. Lisa Carroll, Innovator & CEO of NATIVE EXTRACTS and I had agreed that H Foster would be their distributor and route to market in the UK. NATIVE EXTRACTS and H Foster 1875 share a very similar ethos; we are both family businesses, committed to eco-conscious manufacturing practices and quality processes with an emphasis on service delivery. We are very excited to work with Lisa’s company and bring their expertise and ground-breaking natural ingredient innovations to the UK market. This will have a considerable impact on brands creating new points of difference in the UK market, both in the short term and also in the longer term, with the projects NATIVE EXTRACTS are working on.

This partnership represents the introduction to the UK market of over 400 cosmetic ingredients that harness the natural molecules from a botanical’s cells, including an unprecedented library of Australian Native botanical powerhouses, along with presenting a “new look” at the natural molecules their flagship Cellular Extraction protocols can offer the UK market on the traditional and popular botanical extracts. We will be showing UK brands how they can refresh existing extracts with more clean and conscious innovations that support their pursuit in True to Nature cosmetic ingredients that considers eco-conscious manufacturing practises, inclusivity with First Nation growers in the supply chain, and transparency for brands to champion new stories for the future.