WITH supermodel Claudia Schiffer providing her full support, one Hertfordshire based company looks to be heading for a glowing future.

Daisy Ltd is one of the UK's leading providers of gourmet organic frozen and chilled foods for babies from four months old. The company prides itself on producing baby food which contains all the goodness of fresh fruit and vegetables with nothing added. That means no salt, sugar, preservative or sickly additives are put into the food at any stage just pure fruits and vegetables.

As co-owner Bruce Hudson explained: "The only secret to our success is the high standard of quality goods we use."

Based in Elstree, the company's Fresh Daisy products are already available from selected Sainsbury's and Asda stores and have been given the full backing by star celebrities Claudia Schiffer, Donna Air and chef Antony Worrall Thompson.

Set up just two years ago the company uses only organically grown produce. The company was founded in January 2003 by business partners Bruce Hudson and Gerrie Hawes.

Gerrie was a former manager at Heinz, but became disillusioned at the food on offer which she said "seemed to all smell the same".

After more than eight months researching the reasons as to why, the pair decided to launch their own food range using natural products only.

As Mr Hudson explained further: "Our main aim was to improve the standard of baby food available. The main finding we came out with was that nearly all the foods on the market were sterilised, which meant they were boiled at a temperature of 121.

"This often meant they lost a lot of the taste and was the reason why they smelled and tasted the same. Our boil is at a much lower temperature which means the food retains more of its natural goodness."

The foods come in two types. The Easy Weaner range is for babies of four months and consists of single ingredient purees which make them easy to digest.

The second range of food is Simple Combos. They consist of more ingredients blended together and can be introduced into a baby's diet when they are comfortable with the Easy Weener product.

Since going into production the company has achieved considerable success.

The Fresh Daisy range of foods was voted UK's Best Organic Babyfood by winning the Soil Association's Organic Food Awards 2003 and was runner-up in the babyfood section of the 2004 Vegetarian Society Awards. The company was also highly commended at last year's Organic Food Awards.

It was after receiving this award that success for Daisy Ltd really took off.

Mr Hudson said: "The award at the end of our first year of trading really helped raise the profile of organic food for babies. Then three weeks later the Daily Mail had a front page story warning about the dangers of traditional baby food.

"The Food Standards Agency claimed that the seal on the jars was leaking into the food because of the very high temperatures it was being cooked at.

"This story had a dramatic effect on the sales of baby food and within weeks we had all the major supermarkets contacting us asking to supply our food."

The Sainsbury's store in St Albans was the first to stock the Fresh Daisy range and even had its own little freezer installed in the baby aisle. It is now the only organic babyfood in the babyfood aisle freezers of Sainsburys, Asda and Tesco stores.

The company is now looking into the possibility of producing a third range of foods aimed at toddlers up to the age of one and a half.

And if the third range of foods promises to be as exciting as the first two then Daisy Food Ltd can be sure the future will be rosy.