Strategic spending: the baking industry’s biggest investments of 2025

Investments across the UK baking industry continued at pace during 2025, with brand-new facilities and updates to existing sites, new production lines and more among the projects.

With the clocks ticking down to the New Year, British Baker casts its eyes back over the substantial capex and secured funding announced over the past 12 months, aimed at ensuring growth and stability in the future.

Bakery’s AI-powered project receives cut of £7m fund

In January, Miel Bakery was named among the 120 SMEs that received a share of the £7m in funding from the UK Research and Innovation’s Technology Missions Fund.

The London bakery’s proposed project involved a collaboration with Oxford Cognitive Labs to explore the potential of using artificial intelligence to reduce waste and better predict sales.

Funding was delivered by Innovate UK’s BridgeAI programme, which aims to help SMEs test potentially transformative AI technology across four high growth industry sectors – agri-food, transport & logistics, construction, and creative industries.

Speciality Breads reveals £20m ‘bakery of the future’

Margate-based wholesale business Speciality Breads announced a £20m investment on a new 180,000 sq ft facility back in March. This helps it quadruple production capacity up to 200 tonnes per week across the likes of focaccia, ciabatta, brioche, tin loaves, rustic baguettes, subs, sandwich rolls, burger buns, flatbreads, and teacakes, as well as frozen pizza dough.

Expected to begin operations by the end of this year, the site features a hybrid stone bake oven (gas/electric) and a bespoke bread line supplied by Royal Kaak. The company is aiming for it to become the most sustainable bakery in the UK, with solar panels installed on the roof among the better-for-planet initiatives.

Geary’s Bakeries opens £36m sourdough factory

The doors to Geary’s new £36m custom-built site were flung open at the start of summer at a time when demand for its Jason’s Sourdough range was soaring. The strategic investment has since seen it overtake Kingsmill to become the UK’s third biggest bread brand.

Creating 380 new jobs, it is the third facility in the family-run firm’s growing portfolio, located next to its existing bakery in Glenfield near Leicester. The increased capacity has also allowed Geary’s to expand into new channels such as wholesale via a recent listing with Booker. It has taken its toasties into the retail market too with a Tesco listing, and rolled out new crumpets following launches of flavoured loaves and seeded protein rolls.

Jones Village Bakery spends £47m on new line and factory

Wrexham-based manufacturer Jones Village Bakery announced a double investment totalling £47m in June. This includes £20m on a new roll production line, which went online in November and is expected to create 60 new jobs by next summer.

The remaining £27m is getting spent on converting and extending a storage facility at Wrexham Industrial Estate into a new bakery – one which is located at the same site where its original bakery was destroyed by fire in 2019. Its completion will see Jones Village Bakery operating five plants and continue its impressive growth, now backed by new owner, the Menissez Bakery Group.

Pladis unveils £68m investment across UK sites

The largest known investment sum of the year was tabled by Pladis in July. The global snacking manufacturer said it was pumping £68m into a variety of upgrades at its UK sites with the intention of supercharging growth of some of its best-known brands like McVitie’s and Jacob’s.

Among the expenditures was £33m on new ovens and infrastructure at its Aintree bakery in Liverpool, where it produces Jacob’s range including Cream Crackers and Twiglets. There’s was also £21m splashed on installing a new chocolate moulding line at the McVitie’s Jaffa Cake factory in Stockport, along with £2m to find recruitment, onboarding and training of 48 new staff for the savoury assortments department in Pladis’ historic biscuit site in Carlisle.

Three other facilities – in Halifax, Leicester, and Harlesden in north London – are getting a total of £12m in enhancements set to be rolled out by the end of next year.

Win-Win secures £3m to grow chocolate alternatives offering

Foodtech firm Win-Win raised £3m in July as part of a Series A funding round to introduce new cocoa-free couvertures and compounds in the UK and other major European markets.

With cocoa prices remaining around double that of two years ago, bakers are increasingly looking for ingredients that deliver a sustainable and affordable alternative to standard chocolate. Win-Win produces its range from rice and carob via ‘traditional chocolate crafting techniques’ such as roasting, grinding, refining, and tempering.

Deli Lites invests £19m to expand range and team

Northern Irish food-to-go supplier Deli Lites said it was spending nearly £19m to increase capacity and broaden its product range.

Planned funding of £12.8m, supported by Invest NI’s Agri-Food Investment Initiative, is to go on automating production at its Warrenpoint site and developing the likes of new sandwiches and heat-to-eat items for international markets, whilst also slashing food waste by up to 50%.

An additional £6m is to be used to upskill Deli Lites existing workforce of 300 employees and recruit 130 new jobs.

JPL Flavours reveals new £11m HQ in the Wirral

Family-led flavourings business JPL Flavours opened its new 75,000 sq ft headquarters in Bromborough in September. The site, constructed at a cost of £11m, is equipped with automated manufacturing systems to produce bespoke bake-stable flavourings with both precision and efficiency.

The business works with bakery clients including Krispy Kreme and Fox’s Burtons Companies. It said it is also preparing to patent an analytical process that allows it to uncover details in natural products, such as fruits, that were previously inaccessible.

Finsbury invests millions at Kara Foodservice factory

Bakery supplier Finsbury Food Group revealed a multi-million-pound investment plan into its dedicated foodservice site in Manchester.

The Kara site in Whitefield currently produces over 1.2m bread rolls per day for key national wholesalers and end-users across hospitality, healthcare, education and the quick serve grab-and-go industry. Products include floured baps, brioche style buns, and ready-to-roll pizza doughballs.

Phase one of a 12-month investment rollout that began in October will see enhancements to the factory’s capabilities including the installation of a robotic water splitter to deliver greater variety of designs and finishes. There will also be upgrades to proofing and packing areas, noted Finsbury. Phase two comes in 2026 and will optimise both quality and efficiencies through the end-to-end process.

CSM Ingredients moves into new £3m UK HQ

The UK division of the global ingredients supplier has transferred its headquarters across Cheshire and into a new £3m site in Ellesmere Port.

Spanning two floors and covering 15,635 sq ft of floor space, the new building houses head offices, a customer experience centre, and an NPD facility featuring a state-of-the-art test bakery. All 45 of CSM Ingredients’ UK team have been moved from the previous site in Bromborough which it occupied as part of an agreement with Baker & Baker, the company it separated from in 2021.

Mr Whippy makes £15m play for UK doughnut market

A new £15m factory in Sheffield will be used to produce Mr Whippy doughnuts from next year, helping diversify the sweet treat brand’s existing portfolio of cupcakes and sweets.

The 23,355 sq ft unit located at the new Woodhouse Link employment site near junction 31 of the M1 will have capacity to produce up to two million doughnuts per week.

Mr Whippy strategic development director Joe Sealey told British Baker that they would be focussing on creating “indulgent, finished, injected, and topped doughnuts at an affordable everyday price, which I think will break retail”.