Vegan Heather plants seed for 300 new jobs
Britain’s bust but Baroness Bra is enjoying the sun
HEATHER Mills plans to create 300 jobs by turning the North-East into the “Silicon Valley” of vegan food.
The campaigner has snapped up the former Walkers Crisps factory in Peterlee, Co Durham, near where she grew up – and collects the keys today.
She aims to turn the facility into the nation’s largest vegan-only plant.
Heather, 50, said: “I knew I had to try to buy it. This was the most important factory in the area. And I want to do something positive in the Brexit situation.
“I want this to become the vegan food equivalent of technology’s Silicon Valley in California. A NEW FACTORY Heather Mills plant-based valley, that will bring more business into the North-East.” Walkers’ parent company PepsiCo shut the site in 2017, hitting 355 jobs. Heather, who launched vegan food firm VBites 25 years ago, already has two factories – with 100 staff at Corby, Northants, and 42 at Benton, Newcastle. And with UK vegans surging from 270,000 in 2014 to 3.5 million this year, she thinks it is a sector that Brexit will boost. Heather said: “Plant-based firms in EU countries have come to me and said supermarkets won’t buy from them any more, they’re too expensive. “They’ve asked us to manufacture for them. So yes, Brexit is awful but if it means we’re inexpensive when it comes to manufacturing, then let’s get on and do it.” THE heat is on Tory peer Michelle Mone as she soaks up the sun while her party goes into meltdown.
The Ultimo lingerie firm founder jetted off on a “romantic break” to the Maldives while her party agonised over the Brexit deal.
Posting pictures online of her luxury beach-side hotel, Baroness Mone, 47, said: “Stayed at a lot of incredible places but this has got to be No1 in the world.”
But she added that she would return from her “long deserved” holiday to be back at work today.
Lady Mone was recently revealed to have given just three speeches in the Lords since David Cameron gave her a peerage in 2015. Lady Mone posted shot of her luxury hotel in the Maldives