Northern Pasta Co., the joyful British spelt pasta brand founded on regenerative farming, has entered a new phase of growth with the opening of a 12,000sq ft production facility in Carnforth, Lancashire, as it moves to scale production tenfold and targets £1 million in turnover this year.
The investment follows a high-profile appearance on BBC One’s Dragon’s Den last night (17th September 2026), in which founders Imogen Royall and Matt Kenyon secured a joint offer of £50,000 for 10% of the business from Peter Jones and Deborah Meaden.
THE GROWTH JOURNEY, IN NUMBERS
Four years ago, Northern Pasta Co. was producing 300 bags of pasta a month from a market stall in the North of England – around 1.6 tonnes of pasta a year. By the start of 2026, weekly production had already reached 2.25 tonnes: what once took the business a full year to produce on the stall, it now makes in a week.
The business is now scaling sixfold from that point, to 13.5 tonnes a week, with the new Carnforth site engineered for tenfold capacity. Once at full capacity, Northern Pasta Co. will produce in a single day what once took the best part of two years.Over the next three years, Northern Pasta Co. has further growth ambitions as it aims to create further skilled manufacturing jobs in the north of England, scale production tenfold from the new site – built on a modular system with sixfold capacity already in place, designed to reach tenfold – and break the £1 million turnover mark in 2026.
BEHIND THE GROWTH
The expansion centres on a new 12,000 sq ft site in Carnforth, Lancashire, chosen specifically to support the business’s next stage of growth. Over the last 12 months, the factory team has grown from four to ten employees, and funding has been invested directly into new machinery and team expansion – both the equipment and the craft behind the capacity increase. Together, this marks the foundations of a premium food manufacturing operation rooted in the North of England.
STRENGTHENING THE TEAM
That scale-up isn’t confined to the factory floor. Turning tenfold production capacity into tenfold reach means growing the team that sells and tells the Northern Pasta Co. story, and two senior hires have joined to lead that work. Grace Chau joins as Head of Marketing, bringing ten years spent building and scaling FMCG food brands – from popcorn to pulses and grains, including PROPER Snacks and, most recently, Merchant Gourmet – to the brand’s ambition of becoming the first name people think of when they think of pasta.
Grace is joined by Matt Young as Head of Sales, who brings nine years’ experience scaling challenger brands, most recently as National Account Controller at The Jolly Hog, having previously led the retail channel as Head of Retail at SimplyCook, and will be turning the new site’s capacity into new routes to market as the brand works towards its £1 million turnover target.
Matt Young, Head of Sales at Northern Pasta Co., comments: “I’m very excited to be joining Northern Pasta Co at such a pivotal time for the brand, and looking forward to getting our regeneratively farmed British pasta in front of even more people.”
INVESTING IN CRAFT
Alongside the capacity expansion, Northern Pasta Co. is investing in training its growing team in the craft of pasta-making – the intuition, feel and skill the founders believe separates good pasta from truly exceptional pasta. The ambition is to become recognised as the UK’s pasta experts, with the brand aiming to be the first name people think of when they think of pasta
THE WIDER AMBITION
Northern Pasta Co.’s founders see the business as part of a broader shift taking place in overlooked supermarket categories – comparable to the transformation Fever-Tree brought to tonic water, or Bold Bean Co. to tinned beans. As the business scales, it aims to expand its network of British spelt farmers, supporting an area of agriculture that has long been squeezed by commodity margins, and to grow in a way that actively gives back to British soil.
At the centre of the brand’s ambition is a simpler proposition: in a food culture increasingly focused on counting, measuring and optimising, Northern Pasta Co. wants to bring joy to meal times.
Imogen Royall, co-founder of Northern Pasta Co., comments: “We’re on a mission to make the best pasta in the world, and we’ve just built the home to do it in. What took us a whole year on the market stall, we now make in a week – and soon, we’ll make in a single day what once took us the best part of two years. This is pasta made slowly, by people who take it seriously.”
