An Icelandic company is using fish by-products to produce sought-after collagen supplements and skin products. Feel Iceland, founded in 2013, is now selling their products in Denmark as well as in the United States via Amazon.
“The idea for the business sparked because my father-in-law has a little fishing company in the Westfjords, and I was sort of following what we’re doing with Icelandic fish products,” Hrönn Margrét Magnúsdóttir, one of the company’s owners, told RÚV. “I found we were exporting the raw material quite a bit and not creating many products here at home.”
Hrönn began to do some research, and found that collagen, which could be produced from fish by-products, was popular as a supplement among Japanese women and in cosmetic products. “Collagen is a really neat substance because it’s one of the structural proteins of the body and has such a broad influence, it’s really both for health and for appearance, skin and so on,” explained Kristín Ýr Pétursdóttir, the company’s other owner.
The collagen used in Feel Iceland’s products is produced in Canada, as the technology and equipment required are not available in Iceland. The rest of the production, however, is done in Bíldudalur, in the Westfjords, and Grenivík, North Iceland. The company’s main product is collagen powder, which can be added to food or drinks as a health supplement.
“We just started selling on Amazon in the US and we’re selling in Magasin du Nord and through Danish dermatologists, and then I’m going to China next week because we just got a distributor there,” Hrönn stated. “We have grown slowly but steadily but now we find there’s a lot of growth because collagen has become a very popular dietary supplement around the world and there are always more and more studies that show it’s very effective.”
