Product Information and History

Sela-Cough®, for Throat and Chest, is a very pleasant tasting, but effective, soft-centred lozenge invented by Tom Roberts in 1934. Sela-Cough® is still made using a special formulation of aromatic oils and flavourings which remains a secret to this day, having been passed down through successive generations of the Roberts family. This produces a lozenge with a unique combination of soothing properties and pleasant taste for which Sela-Cough® has become renowned. Even in today's modern, sophisticated marketplace, this fantastic combination of pleasant taste and high effectiveness is still unique, and has ensured that Sela-Cough® has enjoyed great popularity over the decades. The inspiration for Sela-Cough® came from the fact that, at the time, cough sweets were seen as a medicine, rather than a confectionery item to be enjoyed, and tasted as such!

Tom Roberts

Tom thought that if he could invent a sweet which still had the required medicinal benefits, but which tasted pleasant, it would prove a success. And how right he was! Sela-Cough® was an instant hit in the firm's native West Midlands, and local folk still swear by them! Lack of national marketing up until now has restricted the product to a regional base, although since 1992, the product's reputation has begun to spread outside of the Midlands in the UK, as well as overseas. Please take the time to view some consumer comments about Sela-Cough®. Indeed, Sela-Cough® now enjoys the recognition of the classical music fraternity as an audience "noise control" device, being used at Birmingham's prestigious Symphony Hall, and also by BBC Radio 3 at concert broadcasts and recordings! Read our News  page for further details.

Our famous "Sela-Cough®" lozenges have been keeping the "cough" out of Tchaikovsky at Birmingham's world-renowned Symphony Hall since 1993. The soft-centred sweets have proved most successful at preventing those untimely coughs and splutters which are the bane of concert performers' and audiences' lives, especially in a venue as well designed as Symphony Hall where the acoustics are so acute. Recently, the idea of using Sela-Cough® as an audience noise control device has been taken onto the national stage by BBC Radio 3, who distribute the lozenges at live broadcasts and recordings.

Sela-Cough® - The Future

Packaging from the Past

To examine the future for Sela-Cough® you first have to understand a bit about the past mission of the company as a whole. For many decades, the business was a manufacturer/wholesaler, which, with the benefit of hindsight, ultimately proved a mistake. The opportunity to develop Sela-Cough® into a national brand got lost amongst the quest for wholesaling turnover, plus we competed with many potential customers for our manufactured products. Since 1992, the company has specialised in manufacturing, and things have improved, with Sela-Cough®'s reputation having spread across the UK, with "pockets" of demand springing up in all areas.

In 1999, however, Sela's then Managing Director and Great Grandson of Tom Roberts, James Roberts, was approached two successful business people from the pharmaceutical industry. Owning some property in Wolverhampton, they were collecting rent from a newsagent tenant, when one of them suffered a persistent cough. The newsagent immediately offered him a Sela-Cough® as "the locals swear by them", and it instantly stopped the cough! They were really impressed with the relieving properties and great taste of Sela-Cough® but were amazed that they were not widely known outside of the Midlands. They therefore immediately tracked down the manufacturer with a view to getting involved in developing this amazing product into the major national and international brand it deserves to be.

Packaging today

Old advertising poster from the 1930's

This culminated with them acquiring a majority shareholding in the company. Since then, along with James and Sela's dedicated staff, they have been working hard to put in place the required platform from which they can launch Sela-Cough® onto the national and international stage. Sela-Cough® is available in our newly designed, bright 100 gram and 75 gram pre-packs and in 200 gram jars, in both Original and Extra Strong varieties. As you can see, in designing the new packaging, we saw no need to re-invent the wheel - the inspiration for the new design came from an old advertising poster designed in the 1930s.