After failing to turn a profit since it opened three years ago, Duchy Originals’ Cornish bakery is to be taken over by Tamar Foods, part of the Samworth Brothers Group, which will produce the brand’s sweet tarts under licence.

According to Duchy’s CEO Andrew Baker, the bakery in Launceston has made trading losses in each of the three years it has been open due to a lack of volume. "Tamar Foods has a strong presence in Cornwall and is the right partner to take over our bakery and to work alongside us as one of our producer partners," he said.

Duchy, which was set up by the Prince of Wales in 1990, is currently looking to outsource production of the small amount of savouries, such as pasties, made at the 10,000sq ft site.

As well as producing Duchy’s range of sweet tarts, Callington-based Tamar will also add production of its own sweet desserts range to the Launceston bakery, thereby filling some of the spare capacity. Wayne Day, Tamar MD, said: "The bakery is a fantastic production asset to add to our portfolio and will enable us to create one main savoury-focused site [in Callington] in addition to this dedicated satel-lite site for dessert production."

The increased production that Tamar will bring should mean there are very few redundancies among the bakery’s 22 staff, if any at all, said a spokeperson for Duchy.

In other news, Waitrose is reportedly in talks to take over Duchy Originals’ operational costs in return for an exclusivity deal on Duchy products.