Earlier this month, FWP Matthews hosted an Italian bakery demonstration at its mill in Chipping Norton. Italian baker Aldo Cordero, from the Cordero family mill, produced a range of breads, including focaccia, ciabatta rustica and pugliese. The mill has hosted French bakery demonstrations for a number of years, but this was the first time for Italian.

"If you set out your stall to provide a whole range of flours, you’ve got to do more than just knock on bakers’ doors and ask them to buy it. You need to explain more about how the flours work," said FWP Matthews joint MD Paul Matthews. "And it’s a great advantage to the baker to be able to produce something that can’t be made in a supermarket." He said it’s also helpful for the bakers to interact with each other and to discuss new ideas.

Michel Nguyen, from FWP Matthews’ French partner Moul-Bie, said these workshops are a good way for the two companies to communicate what they are doing, and for customers and potential customers to see that the product is genuine.

To mark its 100th anniversary FWP Matthews was also launching two types of flour Nutri-Or and Nutri-Gold which contain an ingredient called aleurone. "Aleurone has a high concentration of nutrients and we have managed to extract and isolate the aleurone layer from the bran," said Nguyen. "Adding it back into our white flour enriches them both with aleurone, so you can claim wholegrain goodness in the product. It’s based on 50 years of work we’ve done on fractionising flour." The marketing pack includes an edible wholegrain goodness rice sticker to bake on products.