A COMPANY creating specialist skincare products
with ingredients imported from Africa has secured major investment for its
planned export drive.
Naturally Tribal Skincare has received £70,000
from Enterprise Loans East Midlands through the Midlands Engine Investment
Fund. The company, based in Stony Stratford, intends to use the finance to begin exporting to the USA and Africa as well as increasing
production and building its product range.
Enterprise Loans business
adviser Matthew Wright said: “The last three years have been about setting up
the business but now Naturally Tribal is ready to invest in larger quantities
of stock in order to deliver its strategy and grow, especially into
international markets.”
Naturally Tribal Skincare,
named New Business of the Year at this year’s Milton Keynes Business
Achievement Awards, was founded by trained pharmacist Shalom Lloyd in 2014 after her new born son Joshua developed
severe eczema. She wanted to develop a natural product that would soothe the
symptoms and imports ingredients from Africa for research, testing, formulation
and manufacture in the UK.
“Our skin is our largest organ
and absorbs a lot of what we put on it so the skincare products we use are
extremely important,” she said. “Therefore, our products are not only vegan and
cruelty free, but also synthetic chemicals free. We really pride ourselves on
our ‘source to jar’ traceability and supporting the community in Nigeria’s
Essan Kingdom, where our ingredients come from.”
The Midlands Engine Investment Fund project is
supported financially by the European Union using funding from the ERDF as part
of the European Structural and Investment Funds Growth Programme 2014-2020 and
the European Investment Bank. Regional growth delivery agency the South East
Midlands Local Enterprise Partnership has also invested in the initiative.
Mr Wright said: “Shalom is incredibly
professional and Naturally Tribal was brought about through her own experience
and sheer hard work. I have been incredibly impressed with her passion for the
business and the quality of the product so I am delighted to help take her
business to the next level.”
SEMNLEP’s growth hub manager
Vicky Hlomuka added: “It is so important to
see local businesses ike Shalom’s Naturally Tribal being able to expand to new
markets. The Midlands Engine Investment Fund is a great choice for local SMEs
looking to develop in this way, which is exactly why SEMLEP invested in MEIF.”
