Seaweed supremo scoops entrepreneur's award

The result means that Fiona will be invited to MADE: The Entrepreneur Festival 2015 in Sheffield in October to compete for the BQ National Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year title, alongside other winners from Yorkshire, the North-East and the West Midlands.

She said: “It is a real thrill for me that this unconventional vision – to build a British seaweed brand that nourishes body and soul – has been recognised by business leaders. The award is a great platform for future growth. But now back to the office to make Mara emerge out of the emerging category.   “We are shocked and absolutely delighted to have won the BQ Scotland Emerging Entrepreneur award and this will help us raise our profile across the UK. We are actively raising funds so we can ramp up production, take on more staff and start to export our unique Scottish product.”   Fiona Houston and Alexandra Milne founded Mara after meeting in the school playground, and discovered a shared passion for rediscovering Britain’s forgotten tastes and natural landscape. Their book Seaweed and Eat It explored Britain’s forgotten foods. It was seaweed, one of Scotland’s most undervalued natural resources, that captured their imagination most, and they set up Mara to bring this ancient food to a modern audience. They sank their own savings into developing the brand and the products and in 2013 raised investment to allow Mara to launch its premium range of seaweed flakes into UK retailers such as Harrods, Harvey Nichols, and Whole Foods. In 2015, the company is raising a second round of investment, mainly to build out the production facility and to invest in sales and marketing to enter lucrative export markets.