History Seven Seas Ltd is a supplier of vitamins, minerals, and supplements in the United Kingdom and abroad. It began in 1935 when a group of trawler owners in Hull formed a co-operative venture called British Cod Liver Oil Producers to exploit one of the fishing industry's most valuable by-products. Kenneth MacLennan, previously of Lever Brothers, became General Manager of BCLO in 1936 to add relevant commercial experience to the then-board of trawler owners. Though the benefits of Cod liver Oil had been known since the 1700s with its first widespread usage for bone diseases as referenced at the Manchester Infirmary around that time as used by Dr. Samuel Kay. However despite it value as a rich source of essential vitamins A & D for human nutrition, in its early days, BCLO sold its greatest volume to the animal feed industry selling various oils under simple descriptions such as Cod Oil, Pale Oil, Cattle Oil, Ruby Oil and Dark Cod Oil. The Company's first branded product was a standardised veterinary product named Solvitax. Medicinal cod liver oil was still to be produced in the early years. With the onset of war came a marked change of focus as the Company's Cod Liver Oil played a vital part in supplementing the meager wartime diet of the whole nation. The company also produced a rich in vitamin C product for the Ministry of Food, known as 'Welfare' Orange Juice. Its production facilities worked night and day providing CLO and Orange Juice for the nation. The Company continued to do so in the years which followed through until sometime after rationing finished in the 1950s. The company offices and production facilities were situated on the south side of St Andrews Dock in Hull ie next to the fish dock there with its hundreds of trawlers but eventually, these were not large enough to cope with the company's plans to market and meet the demand for high-quality veterinary oil and produce medicinal oil to conform to pharmaceutical standards. A new factory was subsequently built in Marfleet, the Marfleet Refinery, at the time, the world's largest cod liver oil refinery, processing one-third of the world's total volume. After being given away to the public for around 15 years or so, because 'it was good for them', the Company took on the difficult challenge of trying to get the public to visit the local chemist and pay money for the product. At the same time, the nutritional health of the nation improved along with their diet as rationing ceased, and the relevance of cod liver oil was being displaced by the introduction of pleasanter ways of taking vitamins such as tasty crunchy tablets like Haliborange. In an effort to advertise cod liver oil, a large fish was created and placed on the back of one of the BCLO trucks. A loudspeaker was fixed in the mouth of the fish to relay sales messages. King Cod was taken around the UK with "A Life on the Ocean Wave" blaring out of the loudspeaker. BCLO was taken over by Imperial Foods, a division of Imperial Tobacco, in 1974. It was not until April 1982 that Seven Seas Health Care Ltd was set up as a subsidiary of the Marfleet Refining Company. Seven Seas was acquired in 1986 as part of the purchase of Imperial Tobacco by Hanson Trust. In 1996, Seven Seas Ltd was purchased by Merck Group. Seven Seas operated from its base in Kingston upon Hull, with its main brands including Seven Seas Cod Liver Oil, Seven Seas JointCare, Multibionta, and Haliborange. In April 2015, the Sevens Seas manufacturing facility in Hull was closed, and the sales and marketing of the brand was moved to Merck's headquarters in London. In 2016, it was one of the biggest selling branded over-the-counter medications sold in Great Britain, with sales of £25.7 million. In 2019, Seven Seas was purchased by Procter & Gamble as part of its acquisition of Merck's consumer health products.
