For more than 60 years a small part of Newcastle has enjoyed the sweet taste of success.
But there are fears almost 500 jobs will be lost at Nestlé in Fawdon, after the global food giant announced plans to focus production elsewhere. Countless confectionery has rolled off the production line at the former Rowntree Mackintosh factory over the years, including Fruit Pastilles, Lion Bars, Smarties, KitKats and Rolos. While its fate remains to be sealed, its colourful past holds many memories for the generations of families who walked through its doors.
‘I stopped eating sweets when I was 11’
“A sweet factory – you would think it would be there forever,” said Sandra Keeney, shaking her head.
Her dad, Alfred Hastings, began working on the Fruit Pastilles production line in the early 1960s, when she was a little girl. Her mum, Sissy, would help out at Easter with the chocolate eggs.
“I stopped eating sweets when I was 11, because there were that many,” she laughed, as she remembered the treats her father would bring home.
“He thought he was hiding them, but we always knew where they were,” she said.
“There were the ones that were not right – all chocolate but no biscuit in them, all fresh but addictive. They’re not the same now though, they are tiny.”
Kept tucked away at home is her dad’s prized cap and overall.
“It’s done its time – I just wish I could put him in it,” she smiled.
The factory is just four streets away from where she now lives.
“I think it’s a big loss, there’s a lot of local people who still work there, lots of young ones you see walking into work in the morning. What’s going to happen to them?
“It’s like part of your past disappearing.”
For Brian and Jean Blanckley working at Rowntree Mackintosh has been a family affair.
The Sunderland couple held a number of jobs at Fawdon, at one point alongside their two sons and Jean’s brother.
Brian recalls keeping tabs on the media when the then-Labour leader, Neil Kinnock, visited the shop floor in the 1980s.
Jean remembers packing Lion bars – a firm favourite among colleagues on their tea breaks – as her husband reminisces about savouring the taste of bars plucked fresh from the production line.
“If you picked a sweet off the belt after it was just enrobed in the chocolate it was totally different to buying one weeks later in the shop – it was perfect, still warm,” he said.