About Us
So who are we and what do we know about Hops? The antecedents and development of the company are maybe a little like the Hop plant itself. It has deep roots and keeps trying to climb higher!
ORIGINS
The company now known as Simply Hops Limited has been developed from the Wigan Hop Company, who have been trading hops in the UK for over 100 years out of our picturesque Eardiston site. Our parent company Joh. Barth and Sohn of Nuremberg, Germany are now on the 6th and 7th generation of family ownership. With more than 200 years of trading hops, nurturing efficient agricultural practises and encouraging new variety development means that there is a lot of experience to be tapped into.
UK HOP INDUSTRY DEVELOPMENT
Botanix Ltd have been making good inroads into the development of natural hop based products (PHA’s Lipohop C-Plus), and are active in the trading of hops in the UK on behalf of the growers co-operative, English Hops Ltd. With great support from our parent company we sponsored a major exchange visit for English Hop Growers to Germany. This has started the process of revitalising our industry.
MARKET CHANGES
US craft brewers have been showcasing strong growth and producing some great and some (frankly), over-hopped beers. Even we think that maybe you can have too much of a good thing occasionally! The market in England is also changing. Fortunately we never lost our heritage of decent beer, and now the craft brewers have injected a further big dose of enthusiasm which may turn into the powerhouse for future growth. Regardless of your particular taste in beer, it seems clear that customers like flavour!
THE E-BUSINESS CONCEPT
We had one serious issue to tackle. Joh. Barth and Sohn and Botanix Ltd are set up for efficient processing of large orders. If you want 50te of hop pellets delivered to your brewery in Russia, the Philippines or anywhere else then we are pretty good at it.
THE KEY QUESTION FOR US AS A GROUP CATERING MOSTLY TO THE NEEDS OF THE BIGGER BREWERIES WAS:
How do we supply the craft brewer, who may only want 5Kg but wants it delivered tomorrow? The answer we came up with was to establish a separate company (Simply Hops Ltd), offering initially a limited variety range on an e-commerce only basis. We certainly have a lot of knowledge about hops, but do understand that different businesses require different approaches. It’s a new venture for us built on strong foundations and we would like to use this opportunity to help you develop your business.
