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Company type | Private |
---|---|
Industry | Baking |
Founded | 1876 |
Founder | Thomas Warburton |
Headquarters | Bolton, Greater Manchester, England |
Key people | Jonathan Warburton (Chairman) |
Products | Bread and other bakery goods |
Revenue | £574.4 million |
Owner |
|
Number of employees | Over 4,500[1] |
Parent | Warburtons Holdings Limited[2] |
Website | warburtons |
Warburtons Limited[3] is a British baking firm founded by Thomas Warburton in 1876 and based in Bolton, a town formerly in Lancashire, England, and now in Greater Manchester. For much of its history Warburtons only had bakeries in Lancashire and it remains a family-owned company. As of 2018, Warburtons has 12 bakeries, 14 depots, and 4,500 employees around the UK.[4]
The company embarked on a large expansion programme in the late 1990s which continued in the 2000s and it has grown across the United Kingdom after being relatively unheard of outside the North West.[5] By 2010, it had a 24% share of the UK bread market compared with 2% when it was based solely in Bolton.[6] In 2008, Warburtons was the most popular bread in Lancashire with a 45% market share compared with just 15% in London.[7]
In 2012, the Warburtons brand was the most popular bread in the United Kingdom, ahead of rivals Kingsmill and Hovis, a position it claimed in 2008.[8] Up to 2010, Warburtons products were the second-best selling food and drink brand in the UK after Coca-Cola[6] and ahead of brands such as Cadbury's, Barr's, and Walker's.[9]
The company donated £25,000 to the Conservative Party in 2010, and staged one of David Cameron's speeches at its Bolton headquarters.[10][11] In a 2016 interview with Campaign, chairman Jonathan Warburton was quoted as saying Brexit was "a very good thing to have happened", and called the European Union a "rotting corpse".[12][13]