LYSI celebrates 70 years
LYSI Ltd. was established in 1938 by Tryggvi Olafsson and his brother
Thordur, in response to a general need for vitamins A and D.
The Great Depression was coming to an end and ahead was World War II.
The difficulties during the Depression caused a number of new companies
to be established in Iceland. In the case of LYSI it was a sudden drop
of vitamins A and D in Norwegian cod liver oil that forced a US company
to seek alternate supplies. It got in touch with Olafsson by telegram
and ended up with placing a sizable order. The snag was that Olafsson
did not have a factory, but he had a building site and in the end he
went to Norway to select and order machinery. The construction of the
factory was completed by the end of that year and LYSI was formally
established on 10 January 1938.
The company has since come far measured in years, know how and
experience, and the new processing plant bears little resemblance to
the first one. Inaugurated in 2005, it is uniquely equipped for the
production of marine lipids, utilizing state-of-the-art technology at
all stages of processing. In 2007 the factory was approved by the
Icelandic Medicines Control Agency (IMCA) to be fully GMP (API)
licensed. The company’s sales and marketing efforts over past decades
received recognition in 2007 when LYSI won the President of Iceland’s
Export Achievement Award.
