Jobs on menu at vegan food plant
ENTREPRENEUR Heather Mills has unveiled plans to create more than 300 North East jobs on the back of a multimillion-pound partnership with a German food giant.
Ms Mills has agreed an investment deal with Pfeifer & Langen Industrie und Handels KG, a £3bn turnover group which owns major brands including KP Foods, Monster Munch and Hula Hoops, which will see it take a 25.1% minority stake in her plantbased food business VBites.
And the money will be used to reopen and ramp production of VBites products at the firm’s Peterlee site, creating more than 320 jobs in 18 months.
Ms Mills bought the former Walker Crisps factory in the County Durham town in 2018, announcing plans to ramp up production of VBites products at the site and create new jobs, as part of long-term ambitions to turn the region into the ‘Silicon Valley’ of vegan food.
Those plans were put on hold, however, as Covid-19 lockdowns and the closure of restaurants and hotels effectively led to the factory being mothballed – until now.
Ms Mills, who was born and raised in Washington, Tyne and Wear, said the new partnership with the investors will be transformational for the plant-based food sector, putting her plans for regional growth back on schedule.
She first launched VBites in 1993, and has been producing plant-based alternatives in the meat, fish and dairy free business-to-business and business-to-consumer sectors, winning more than 80 international taste awards along the way.
The company exports to more than 20 countries and counts Dominos, Applewood, Ocado, Morrisons, Spinneys and Greencore among its clients, producing all of its products in the UK at its factories in Benton, Newcastle, and Corby, Northamptonshire.
The investment will see VBites scale up its operations in the North East sites, which cover 300,000sqft of factory space, and potentially lead to expansion elsewhere.
In 2019, Ms Mills also snapped up the former Coty factory in Seaton Delaval, Northumberland, which she planned to turn into Plant Valley, a home for a raft of vegan start-ups as well as her VBites business, renting space in the site’s huge warehouses to fund her own venture.
However, the entire site is now used by the NHS for PPE production, which is leading to all Plant Valley activities switching to the County Durham site.