BOLTON’S world famous bakery business Warburtons is cooking up plans to create a state-of-the-art research and development centre.

The family firm behind the Giant Crumpet and Sandwich Thins reckons its new purpose-built centre will be the best thing since sliced bread, allowing them to continue bring customers innovative new products.

Plans have been submitted to Bolton Council which lay out the vision for the research and development test bakery, as well as quality control laboratories and new offices near the existing Warburtons office headquarters and bakery at Hereford Street in Bolton.

The proposed new two story building will cover a total area of 2,278 square metres and will be outside the secure perimeter of the existing Warburtons’ facility.

Warburtons says it will have more of an ‘open campus feel’ and suggests that an existing right of way connecting Black Bank Street to Waters Meeting Road could be diverted around the perimeter of the bakery site.

The research and development centre is seen as an extension to the existing Warburtons headquarters, which includes the manufacture and distribution of baked goods, marketing, finance and HR offices and car parking for visitors and staff.

The existing facility is within a secure compound which is manned by a guardhouse to allow visitors and staff into the premises securely.

“As an ambitious business Warburtons are proud to be the number one bakery brand in the UK but have ambition to become Britain’s best food business.

“To facilitate this goal new state of the art facilities are required for the company’s dedicated product development team and a key base for their head of innovation to develop new ways of giving British families great quality, great tasting food that fits in with their daily lives.

In its planning application the company states: “The new R&D facility will be a key development which will ensure the company continues to innovate and lead the bakery food sector sustaining the company’s well respected image as a dedicated family business.”

The company and its planning agent, DLA Design have released artists’ impressions of how the new facility could look.

A large glass-fibre plinth would shield the private research and design spaces and test bakery at ground level to keep the latest ideas being cooked up top secret.

If approved, the new facility, which would house 40 existing employees, would be open from 8am to 6pm.

The company has also found favour in recent years with a series of high profile advertising campaigns including famous characters The Muppets and Sylvester Stalone.

A spokesman for Warburtons told The Bolton News: “Since opening our first grocery shop in Bolton in 1870, we have always been committed to developing our family business locally. If the planning is granted, the new research and development centre will provide state-of-the-art facilities so we can continue to deliver unbeatable quality and breakthrough product innovation to families across the UK.”

The company was first established when Thomas Warburton and his wife Ellen opened a grocery shop in 1870, although they did not start baking bread until six years later.

Ellen’s first batch of four loaves of bread and six cakes sold out in under an hour. Within two weeks the tiny shop in Bolton was renamed ‘Warburtons the Bakers’ and continued to go from strength-to-strength over the next 139 years.

Warburtons is still a private business, actively managed by the fifth generation of Warburtons — Jonathan, Ross and Brett — and employs 4,500 people.