History of
SEABOARD
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The start of Søbogaard
The founder of "Søbogaard", Poul Hansen, grew up on the farm Søbogaard, which is beautifully located down to Kimmerslev lake by Kimmerslev church. It is located in a protected area, so unfortunately there are no opportunities for expansion. In the spring of 1976, the first 80,000 bees arrived in Søbogaard, when our bee teacher Åge Nielsen Karlstrup provided us with two bee families. The forests and clover fields in Central Zealand were visited by our bees, and soon they made more honey than we could eat ourselves.
We started selling at Køge Torv, and when we peaked, we had 250 bee families, so we had to go all the way to Copenhagen to find customers for our honey. "Kaffe, Tea og Vinkælderen" on Frederiksborggade, now Rosenborggade, became our very first customer in Copenhagen. Since then, we have expanded the range with juices, jams and beer, and new variants are constantly being added.
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Elderflower
Already in the 1980s, Søbogaard operated the first organic shelf plantation in Denmark. The first time we tried to impart this unique product to our customers was at Skanderborg Festival. At the festival, however, our nails were more interesting, so before heading back home to Borup from Denmark's Most Beautiful Festival, we had to fertilize the forest with Søbogaard's very first production of elderflower drink.
Later, however, we managed to break through, and we were the first to get the elderflower commercially into the Danish market. We have introduced organic lemonade in cafes under the noses of large foreign companies, and for several years we have paid more tax in Denmark than many of the large foreign companies.
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Søbogaard and Nepal
Since 1999, Søbogaard has been part of a Danida project concerning the cultivation of shelf food, the development of organic regulations and the development of ice, jam and beverage concepts in Nepal. Unfortunately, shortly after we planted the first shelves, civil war broke out in Nepal, but the day after it ended, our Nepalese partner called and said that we could come back, because now they had stopped shooting. In September 2007, we therefore went back to Nepal. We had to admit that the trees didn't look too good, but we got new plants
Nepal, along with, among other things, strawberries, which were planted in different air layers. Since there were no rules about ecology in Nepal, we helped write these. In addition, since 2008 we have run Guest House from a small organic farm, which we have rented from 7 brothers. The farm has been run ecologically approximately since 1983 by an American woman. In 2013, Søbogaard's factory in Bhaktapur was ready, and at the top we have furnished with a café and a showroom.
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Søbogaard today
In 2008, Ellen and Niels bought "Store Voldsgaard" near Studsgård, where part of the production moved over. In 2013, Ellen became co-owner of Søbogaard, and today Søbogaard is run from both farms.
Today, the office and production are located in Studsgård, and the wings of the farm in Kimmerslev form a warehouse for goods for our Zealand customers.
Today, Søbogaard is Studsgård's leading jam and juice producer.
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Raw materials
We work closely with our Danish growers, both large and small. The more Danish raw materials we can get, the better. Therefore, we also have both small hobby farms and large growers who supply Danish raw materials for our products, and more are added every year. When the world-famous restaurant el Bulli chose to use Søbogaard's products in their kitchen, it was because of the high quality of the ingredients. It is extremely important for us to use good ingredients in our products, as taste is paramount to us.
We have a moody*, quality product that we believe stands out significantly from other products on the market, by being original and by having taste as our number one priority.
*We call the products moody because we like to tell good jokes and spread good humor over the jam pot and juice pot.
