Worksop Factory

TheWorksop Factoryis a main food manufacturing site inBassetlaw Districtin northNottinghamshirethat makes well-known types ofinstant food, such asinstant noodles, as well as well-knowngravyproducts.
Unilever a site atEast Bridgford.
In July 1969, £750,000 was invested in a new plant for packet soups, to open in 1971.In 1969, the extension to the factory was begun by local MPJoe Ashton; it would employ 300 more people.
A new factory was to be built in early 1975.The site was fined in September 1977.
Packet soups moved to Kent in the early 1990s.
A distribution centre was built in 1999, with another in Peterborough,which opened on 3 December 1999.
In September 1977, a nine-week strike by theTGWUcost the company £5.5m.
In the mid-1980s, £2m was invested at the site. Cardboard for the tubs is provided bySonocoEurope, in Chesterfield; the former Robinson Paperboard Packaging was bought in July 2011.
Every day the site makes 3.7m Oxo cubes. Around 50 million Bisto gravy drums are made a year.
Oxowas made atGreat Harwoodfrom 1939 to December 1992, when production was moved to Worksop by Unilever. Around four hundred employees had been at the Great Harwood site in Lancashire, but Unilever had tried to build a new factory in the 1980s, which was blocked by the local council.
After blocking a new factory in the 1980s, when Unilever announced to the local council, in 1990, it was leaving, the council attempted to stop Unilever leaving.Discussions were held in London with the local Conservative MP,Ken Hargreaves.In February 1991, it was announced that Oxo would move to Worksop, as part of Brooke Bond. Manufacturing equipment would move later in 1991.Manufacturing moved in December 1992.
Oxo became part of Van den Bergh Foods in 1995 at Crawley.
Saxasalt andBistowere made atMiddlewichinCheshireuntil September 2008, which was the formerCerebosuntil 1968.
Bisto and Paxo, moved from Greatham to Middlewich in 1968, and moved Worksop in 2008, previously being made by RHM Foods. Middlewich had also made Paxo stuffing, now made in Kent.Prince Philipvisited this Bisto factory on 25 June 1969.RHM had bought Cerebos for £61m in July 1968. Cerebos also owned Sharwoods sauces, which mostly made mango chutney;Cerebos had bought J.A. Sharwood in November 1962.Sharwoods was made from 1968 by RHM in Greatham in Teesside;this site was the former Greatham Salt and Brine Works, and was the headquarters of Cerebos;the site also made Atora suet, now made in Wales (Dafen, Carmarthenshire).RHM, itself, was formed in 1963.RHM exported over six hundred different products to seventy five countries.
In 1995Ragúsauce andChicken Tonightstarted to be made at the site, the first in the UK; there were many TV advertisements.
The process line was built by T Musk Engineering ofSwadlincote, part of WT Parker.
Main variety ofmushy peaswereMarrowfat peasand Alaskan Blue.Peas were sorted at Worksop, in the 1960s, then processed elsewhere.
Another pea plant was on George Street inHuntingdon, with 325 staff; it closed in 1966.Birds Eyewas bought in 1943 by Unilever, but Worksop had nothing to do with frozen peas, this was all largely atLowestoftinSuffolk.
It has the company research department for dried foods.
The site had most collaboration, in research, with the Colworth research division, which was bought by Unilever in 1947.
In the 1960s the Unilever Food Development Unit on Greyhope Road was at theTorry Food Science Laboratory, near Aberdeen, where it developedaccelerated freeze drying, which the British government had required Unilever to investigate, during the Cold War. The site closed in July 1965.