UK Enterprise Awards 2021

UK Enterprise Awards 2021 | 77 IngredientsDirect.com including vitamins, minerals, electrolytes and nutritional lipids. Similar to functional foods, nutraceutical ingredients are used in products designed to deliver either a health and/or wellbeing advantage. These bioceutical ingredients exist as potential alternatives to the pharmaceutical approach to treatment and prevention of illness and disease. Additionally, certain ingredients may be used to provide perceived support to cognitive, metabolic or other physiological functions. Richard Tidman, Director at IngredientsDirect. com, tells us more about the firm and what it is that distinguishes it from competitors. “Traditionally, ingredients have been procured via the time-consuming process of manual orders, invoices and payments,” he explains. “IngredientsDirect.com provides access to industry grade materials via a simple e-commerce model. It reduced the time required sourcing and facilitating orders for both the customer and us as a business.” “Our biggest challenge to date has been streamlining the order fulfilment process to bring down our lead time from order to delivery,” Richard continues. “Given that the average order entails the shipping of around 150kg of material, the logistical effort in fulfilling these orders within 1-2 business days has been significant. But we are able to achieve this turnaround now consistently for around 95% of orders.” Staff play a huge part in the success of the business and, wherever possible, Richard looks to hire team members who have graduated with a degree in food sciences or similar. “Technical knowledge is critical in our business, as well as a good understanding of the regulations,” he states. “We advocate transparency across the business and embrace a flat hierarchy in terms of our organisational structure. The majority of our team work remotely, aside from our warehouse team, and we apply a data driven approach to our work across operations, marketing, product and finance.” Despite operating purely online, Richard elaborates on the main benefits of being based in the UK, of which there are plenty. “The UK provides a positive environment for us to scale based on a number of factors. Firstly, the UK is great market in terms of the penetration and scale of functional food, functional beverage, nutraceutical and sports science brands. These brands are our core customer base, and the industry has seen year on year growth over the last 10 years or so. The mainland UK is also a good place for us to do business in terms of logistics. Our warehouse in Milton Keynes is able to fulfil most shipments within 48 hours from point of order. The UK’s departure from the EU has added some complexity to our plans - but we hope to be able to offer goods to European customers in the future.” Speaking of the future, Richard and the team at Ingredients Direct have big plans for development in the pipeline, with the emphasis on three key goals for the remainder of 2021 and into next year. These include to increase the range of products available to more than 1,000 ingredients; to increase awareness in UK manufacturing customers; and to continue opening access to Europe and beyond. It appears that all plans are on track for further growth and it seems that the only way is up for Ingredients Direct as the company was recently awarded the prestigious accolade of Nutritional Ingredients Specialists of the Year 2021 in the UK Enterprise Awards. Quite understandably, Richard and the team were thrilled to receive such a title. “We are delighted to have been recognised by the UK Enterprise Awards,” he enthuses. “A lot of hard work is going into the launch and growth of IngredientsDirect.com, and to have this recognised means lot to all of us here. “We pride ourselves on delivering a high standard of customer service and strive to simplify the process of procuring nutritional ingredients for our customers, and we will continue to do so.” Contact: Richard Tidman Company: IngredientsDirect.com Web Address: ingredientsdirect.com