Direct sourcing sees Omega Pressery win Grocer Gold startup award

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Omega Pressery

Direct sourcing model sees Omega Pressery help suppliers and nature

Winner: Omega Pressery

Fed up with a lack of food diversity in UK supermarkets, Nikita Dawda and Niheer Shah returned to their Kenyan roots for inspiration before launching Omega Pressery in 2024. The pair are on a mission to bridge the gap between shoppers and smallholder farmers, while also restoring a connection between food supply and Mother Nature.

Omega Pressery works directly with avocado and macadamia farms in the foothills of Mount Kenya to ensure growers receive a fair price, while encouraging regenerative and organic practices to boost soil health. The brand also exclusively uses surplus wonky produce destined to go to landfill for its premium cooking oils, saving in excess of three million misshapen fruits from going to waste last year. Alongside this work, it distributes avocado tree seedlings to farming partners to support future harvest resilience.

Building Omega from the ground up has resulted in a fully traceable, branch-to-bottle supply chain, with single-ingredient, single-origin avocado and macadamia oils, bringing transparency to an often-adulterated category. And as consumer mistrust of refined, highly processed seed oils rises, so has the demand for healthier fats and clean labels. Omega’s focus on transparency, traceability and quality has garnered Great Taste awards and a Soil Association Organic certification.

Despite being a lean operating team of just three full-time employees, the business has moved from two to eight SKUs and amassed more than 600 distribution points in the UK, including a mainstream listing with Waitrose. It offers a full spectrum of avocado oils – from cold-pressed extra virgin to light – in multiple formats, including sprays, to retail and foodservice, as well as wholesale and ingredient channels. Omega is also available internationally in its origin market of Kenya, expanding across 200 stores in east Africa’s largest supermarket chain.