Based just next to a women’s hospital in central Liverpool, Renshaw’s premises is strategically located at the end (or beginning, depending which way you look at it) of the ‘sugar corridor’ of the M62, with the Liverpool docks only a mile or so away.
An imposing 150,000 sq ft manufacturing site with a partial resemblance to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory in Roald Dahl’s famous “Charlie and The Chocolate Factory” story, it supports the manufacture of a large selection of baking and cake decorating products supplying the bakery and “sugarcraft” sector.
I was very kindly invited to visit the Renshaw site and meet with David Wright, Operations Director at Renshaw Napier, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Real Good Food Company PLC, which also owns and operates three other subsidiaries – Napier Brown, Haydens Bakeries and Garrett Ingredients.
To new or prospective investors, the Real Good Food Company is discussed in much more detail in a previous article published on Stockopedia.
The focus of this article is purely with the Renshaw business.
Renshaw – Ready for lift off
Whilst attempting to park in the midst of a shift ‘change-over’ and at the same time avoiding the tanker sugar silo deliveries, you begin to appreciate the frenzied activity taking place on the site. In fact, finding a parking space was a bit of a challenge as the car park is bursting at the seams due to the number of people now working onsite, which at the last count was over 310. This is only going to increase with the on rush of Christmas orders that need to be supplied to supermarkets, food manufacturers and general retailers up and down the country and around the world.
Eventually, I made it safe and sound into the reception area and David took me up to the factory offices and through a corridor which was decorated with black and white framed pictures of previous “Renshaw Professional Bakery competitions” dating all the way back to the 1950’s, when the company was still family owned and run.
“This is something that we’d like to resurrect as the previous owner of Renshaw (Swiss Group “Hero”) let it lapse back in the mid 1990’s. It was an excellent way of introducing new products to the professional baking / sugar crafting industry as well as instructing baking competitors in the use of our existing products”.
Renshaw ‘the brand’ and…
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