Baker Colin sets his stall out for Taste 2

Aug 5 2008 by Jane Hall, The Journal

COLIN Smurthwaite was certainly using his loaf when he set up his bakery business 16 years ago.

For he has turned what started off as a kitchen table operation making cakes and biscuits into a venture employing 40 people and on track to turn over £1.5m by the end of this year.

Heatherslaw Bakery’s distinctive product packaging featuring a water-powered corn mill is now a familiar sight in food shops, delicatessens and garden centres not only in the North East and Cumbria, but also in the south of England, the Highlands and Islands of Scotland and Ireland. It could also soon be gracing the shelves of chic French food outlets if talks with a Parisian distributor bear fruit.

But little is known about the man behind the successful business based in north Northumberland.

Colin, 59, has stayed out of the spotlight, working quietly behind the scenes, but now he is willing to take a modest bow as the company he set up emerges as one of the most impressive food producers in the North East.

Colin, a food technology graduate of Nottingham University and rich in managerial experience at Express Dairy Foods in Somerset and the former Shaw’s Biscuits and Northumbrian Fine Foods of Gateshead, was made redundant by Jus-Rol in Berwick. With his knowledge of cake and biscuit making, he decided to set up his own business.

So in February 1992 after test marketing at home in Berwick, he took over converted former farm buildings adjoining the still-working old corn mill at Heatherslaw on the Ford and Etal Estates, and began producing a range of six types of handmade biscuits.

His early best sellers, principally to visitors to the corn mill shop and other tourist attractions in north Northumberland, were ginger parkins and butter shortbread. Gradually he increased the range of biscuits and cakes and expanded territorially, too. He found an agent to sell his products in Scotland and was then persuaded by Sandy Duncan, of Northumbria Larder, the regional food group, to take part in his first trade show at the NEC in Birmingham.

“I wasn’t sure how it would go, but our produce attracted a lot of attention and out of that show we got our first order from Windsor Farm Shop, one of the best in the country,” Colin recalls. “We still supply them to this day. They are one of our best customers.”

That’s not the end of the Royal connection, however. Heatherslaw Bakery cakes and biscuits are also on the menu at the Palace of Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh, the Queen’s official residence in Scotland.

In order to keep such important customers, it is essential Heatherslaw Bakery maintains the quality of its handmade products and Colin, wherever possible, uses local eggs and stoneground wholemeal flour from the Heatherslaw Corn Mill. The latter is run separately by a charitable trust for the Ford and Etal Estates, but the bakery company distributes and sells the corn mill’s produce, which includes wholemeal, rye and white flours, muesli, rolled oatflakes, oatmeal and bran.

Colin’s quest for perfection means his cakes and biscuits sell at the top end of the market and, barring any possible fallout from the credit crunch, he feels people are prepared to pay for the best.

“We have done very well from the growth of farm shops, independent food stores and garden centres across the country, and you will find our biscuits and cakes in top quality shops like Fenwick of Newcastle.”

This year, for the first time, Colin has produced a glossy brochure detailing Heatherslaw’s range of hand baked shortbread and cream-filled biscuits, traditional handmade cakes – including the best-selling Cherry Madeira – fruit cakes, fingers and slices, Swiss rolls, sponge cakes, fruit squares, and a large variety of Easter and Christmas items.

Colin no longer needs any convincing about the value of exhibiting his produce at national food fairs and meet-the-buyers’ events.

His next public appearance will be at the Glendale Show, Wooler, Northumberland, on Bank Holiday Monday, August 25, when he and his daughter, Jennie, 28, will be on duty for Heatherslaw Bakery in the popular food marquee. His elder daughter, Elizabeth, has also worked alongside her dad in the bakery.

The following Saturday will see Colin and Jennie setting out their stall at The Journal Taste 2 food and drink festival in association with Tesco at the Macdonald Linden Hall hotel, golf and country club at Longhorsley, near Morpeth.

Colin didn’t attend our first Taste event in support of The Journal’s buy, use, eat local campaign which saw 62 stallholders and 10,000 people descend on the National Trust’s Gibside estate near Rowlands Gill, Gateshead.

“We didn’t go to Gibside and it struck me when I read and heard about the event afterwards that we should have been there, so when Taste 2 came about, and it looked as if it was again going to be good for local producers, I knew we had to be involved.

“This is the first event that has come along that it looks as if it will genuinely be a showcase for the region’s producers.”