Original subtitles

♪ MTV ♪

Every year, we eat

a mind-boggling 90 billion sweets!

That makes us one of the biggest consumers

of sweets in the world.

- This is one of the oldest sweet factories in Britain.

- Where a team of over 500 people

is working really hard to keep up with that demand.

And tonight, they're letting us inside.

[upbeat music]

I'm Gregg Wallace.

- [laughing] - What is that?

And tonight I'm going to help this factory turn raw sugar...

- I've made a witch's brew here, look!

- Into some of Britain's most iconic sweets,

from Love Hearts Drumstick lollies.

- How do you get it so the pink is in the middle

and the white's around the edge?

I'll learn the sweet-making secrets...

- I've made a right pig's ear of it!

- That make these products among the nation's favorites.

- Does shaking them stop them sticking together?

In what could be

the most romantic factory in the world.

One in four of the people who work here

are actually in a relationship with each other.

No way!

[upbeat music]

I'm Cherry Healey,

and I'm going to find out

how they put the writing in rock.

That is the letter E.

Wow! That's brilliant!

And that us Brits have very particular tastes

when it comes to sweets.

- Holy moly! - Yeah, be brave.

- I think my eyes have exploded.

And historian Ruth Goodman

investigates how sweets were first invented.

So fiddly.

I can't imagine doing an entire jar of these.

♪ Hey ♪

Over 100 million individual sweets are made,

wrapped, and bagged at this factory

every single day.

And we're gonna show you the secrets of how it's done.

Welcome to "Inside the Factory."

- [bell dings] - [upbeat music]

♪ Hey ♪

♪ Hey ♪

[word thudding]

♪ Hey ♪

[whimsical upbeat music]

- This is Swizzels in New Mills, Derbyshire.

One of the largest family-owned sweet factories in Britain.

And for those of you with a sweet tooth like me,

a very dangerous place to be.

[laughs]

- This five-story factory spans over 25,000 square meters

and it's been pumping out sweets since 1940.

Tonight, I'm going to show you how, in just 24 hours,

they can turn 56 tons of raw sugar

into 100 million sweets.

I'll visit four parts of the factory

that make four different types of sweet.

Powdered, which are hard tablet sweets.

Boiled, where they make lollies.

Chews, where their bestseller is the Drumstick.

And finally, jellies, where they make Squashies.

But before the factory can produce any of them,

we need a key ingredient, sugar.

They make over 50 different types of sweets

in this factory.

And most of them start off life as one of these.

[gentle upbeat music]

Over half of all the sugar we consume in the UK

is made from sugar beet.

It's harvested between September and February

on around 3,500 farms across the Eastern Counties.

It's processed in factories like this one in Norfolk,

that gets through three million tons of beet

every year.

[upbeat rhythmic music]

It's washed, cut into strips,

and then giant diffusing machines

dissolve the sugar out of the beet using hot water.

The sugary water is put through three separate boiling processes

to create sugar crystals.

These are then separated from the water,

creating granulated sugar,

that's dried out, ready for shipping.

Two tankers like this one will make the 150-mile journey

to the sweet factory every single day.

I'm in the loading bay

with production manager Barry Land...

No sweets without sugar...

- Barry. - No.

- To receive the first of those two sugar deliveries.

This is 28 tons going in, is that right?

Yeah.

So, it's pretty much turning sugar around

- on a daily basis. - Yeah.

- So what's your worry? What keeps you awake at night?

The sugar not turning up.

No sugar, we can't make any sweets.

Have you any idea

how many unhappy children there'd be?

[Barry laughs]

- Can you feel that responsibility, Barry?

- Yes, very heavy on my shoulders.

Yeah, you're right, Gregg!

[both laughing]

- Turn it? - Yeah.

- The pump on this lorry uses compressed air...

I'm not manually pumping it out, am I?

To blow the sugar out of the tank

and three stories up

to the top of a massive sugar silo.

Let's do it!

[suspenseful music]

[button clunks]

[timer beeping]

Sugar's going in.

- Let's make some sweets. - [laughing]

First of all, I'm going to the powdered sweet department

to make Fizzers, Parma Violets, and Love Hearts.

I'm starting at the top of the building,

in the mixing room, where the magic begins.

[gentle majestic music]

The smell in here is unbelievable!

I mean, you could just walk around here

licking it off the wall.

[laughing]

Barry, I've seen the sugar come in,

now what do you do with it?

We get it into the factory just like granulated sugar,

but it's too coarse for us to do anything with.

So we have to mill it to a finer powder.

That's so it'll take in a liquid,

the binding agent, the colors.

The sugar, binding agent, and color

are mixed together in these machines.

Oh!

- No good to us. - [Gregg laughs]

- Which turns the powder into a sticky mixture.

So the binding agent and the color,

because they're both liquid,

has made the dried sugar into like a putty.

Exactly.

Right, then what happens?

It's no good to us being wet.

We need a dry powder.

So what's happening now,

we're putting it through our dryers.

- This dryer runs at 120 degrees centigrade.

So in just 10 minutes, the sticky mixture is dry again.

- It looks exactly the same, but as you can tell, it's dry.

- Some sweets fizz in your mouth when you eat them.

And that's down to two ingredients

they add next.

Bicarbonate of soda and malic acid.

They react together and release carbon dioxide,

but only when they come into contact

with the water in saliva.

Next, they're adding flavor

and I'm helping with the Parma Violets.

- That's just a concentrated flavored oil.

- The violet flower has been used to flavor sweets

for hundreds of years and inspired this sweet.

Although what we're adding is a synthetic version.

Taste it. It's strong.

Why did you let me do that?

- I'm sorry. I told you--

Why did you let me do that?

- I told you it was concentrated!

First of all, you get the lovely violet flavor,

then it's like having your tongue scrubbed

with washing-up liquid!

- Don't forget, Gregg, you've just tasted enough

for over 1,000 Parma Violet tablets.

Where do I put it in?

Follow me.

- Once the flavor has been added,

the sugar mixture is ready to be turned into sweets.

Well done, that's it,

you've flavored a mixing of Parma Violet.

[gentle rock music]

Our mixture is now sent down to the second floor

and stored in a movable container.

They're each filled with different colors

and flavors of powdered sugar.

[upbeat music]

[forklift truck whirring]

On the first floor below

are the machines that press the sweets.

And they're fed with sugar

from the containers through funnels in the floor.

Right now, they're making Fizzers.

And they've just requested a fresh batch of powder.

- Can I have a go? Can I pull that out?

You go for it. Try it, Gregg.

- [Gregg chuckles] - Is that right?

- Yeah. That's how it should be.

Gravity is all that's needed

to drop half a ton of powder 15 feet down

to the powder sweet pressing room.

- I've made a witch's brew here, look!

It's a bit of eye of frog and toe of newt,

mate, innit?

[cackles]

♪ With me little stick of Blackpool rock ♪

- Coronation Rock has been making this sweet here

in Blackpool since 1927,

producing up to 16,000 sticks a day.

[jaunty upbeat music]

Managing director Ian Atkinson knows all about the hard stuff.

Ian, I had absolutely no idea

that rock came in so many flavors.

There are some extraordinary ones here.

- We always used to make the traditional flavors,

you know, mint, fruit, pineapple.

Now, everyone wants something wacky.

We've got lager flavored rock, gin and tonic rock.

We've got pizza-flavored rock,

Marmite, we've got chicken tikka.

People really buy that?

- They buy it in big quantities. It's really popular!

Ever since I was little, I've wondered,

how do you get the letters through the rock?

Why don't we go down to the factory now,

and you can try it yourselves?

- Amazing. Yes, please. - Come with me.

- Confectioner David French has been making rock here

for over 35 years.

Right, Cherry, what would you like?

I think we should write Gregg's rock.

- Gregg's rock? - I think he'd like that.

Okay, then. Gregg's rock, it'll be.

- The writing in rock is too small

for any man or machine to make.

So to solve the problem,

they make a giant stick of rock first

and then stretch it to the right size.

[rousing music]

To start the recipe, they boil sugar and glucose,

then tip it onto water-cooled slabs.

- We've gotta cool it down so we can work with it.

- Color is added to some of the sugar.

A bit more.

- This will create the outer shell

and the letters inside the rock.

Oh, my gosh, it's fizzing!

Bubbling away.

The temperature drops swiftly, but it's still 70 degrees.

Whoa! You can touch it?

- Just the edges. - Not for long, yeah.

- Not for long. - [scissors chopping]

Whoa, it's amazing!

It's like a runny egg.

- You can lift that piece up, if you wish.

[gasps]

Oh, I can't lift that!

How are you touching that?

- You have asbestos hands. - I probably have, yes.

- Next up, the flavor needs to be added

to the rock's core.

What flavor would you like?

Well, one of my favorite things in the whole world

is salted caramel.

Is it possible to do a salted caramel?

- Salted caramel, yes. We could have salted caramel.

Right.

Ooh, that's strong!

I'll pour that into it, yeah?

Oh, wow.

- We're gonna put this on the top now

and seal it in.

- Like a pie. - Yeah.

- The rock's core is put in a special pulling machine

for six minutes to aerate it.

So it becomes white, brittle, and easy to bite through.

Almost like a giant whisk.

- Yeah. - Adding air.

- The colored sugar used for the outer casing

and the letters are worked by hand.

Gregg's rock.

That's the letter E.

Wow! Yes, of course, it is!

That's brilliant!

It's so wonderful to see something

made by hand.

You can make a letter C.

Put that inside it, okay?

- Just like that? - Yes, and turn it over.

- And fold them pieces round the outside.

Is that it?

Oh, wow!

[majestic music]

The letters must be done quickly,

as we've only got 20 minutes before the rock

will be too hard to mold.

- What is the hardest letter to make?

- The Q. The Q is one of my pet hates.

Really? Hate the Q?

The Q and the G.

The Q and the G?

Oh, no, "Gregg's, we've got three!

[laughs]

- White strips are placed between the colored letters.

The letter R.

Another piece of white.

Letter E.

- So that's the inside of a stick of rock.

The letters can now be assembled with the rolled-out,

aerated core.

[grunts]

Wow, that is not light!

[laughs]

So one word is on the top and one is on the bottom.

Right.

- Then it's all wrapped in a colorful casing.

The scale is ridiculous.

It is huge!

That is hysterical.

Feels like we're making a stick of rock for a giant.

- To turn the 60-kilogram colossal log of rock

into a stick,

we'll need to use the batch roller.

- And it'll shape it into a cone shape

at the front of the machine.

- It still looks pretty massive.

It is pretty big at the moment, but it'll soon diminish

as we pull it out into smaller bars.

- So you're really pulling it out by hand?

Yeah.

- So now, you just keep on pulling it out?

Yes.

- So you're twisting it to give it that

recognizable twisty thing.

Spiral. Nice spiral.

If you karate chop that now, give it that karate chop.

Ha-cha!

- Oh, wow! - Yeah.

Oh, it says, "Gregg's rock."

It does. It really does!

- It worked. It really works! - That's my credibility saved.

It's perfect.

- And finally, strings of rock are cut

to the correct length by cutters.

- Great! - And wrapped by hand.

- So here we are. The first stick of Gregg's rock!

The E is very big.

The E is very big, yes.

Oh, wow!

I think Gregg's gonna be very happy with that.

I think he will be, yeah.

[upbeat music]

[timer beeping]

- Three hours after the morning sugar delivery,

and I've seen sugar being milled,

colored, and flavored.

Now I'm with Barry in the powder pressing room

on the first floor...

- What is that? - [laughing]

- Where they'll turn it into sweets.

And right now, they're making Fizzers.

- About 5,000 a minute are coming off this machine.

- But the stuff upstairs was so fine,

it was coming up in clouds.

I don't get how it's turned into a firm tablet, at all.

- The secret to making these powdered sweets

is the tablet press machine.

- You can see where the punchers are coming round.

The powder is coming down.

On those two wheels

is where the punchers are coming together.

- Crushed on top, crushed on the bottom?

- Pressured down between the two rollers.

- These punches squeeze the powder together

under three tons of pressure,

to form a tablet sweet.

All the powder sweets are made in the same way.

Including what could be

the most romantic sweet in the world.

[gentle jazz music]

The Love Heart.

They've been making them here since 1954.

And the recipe and design

have barely changed in all that time.

What made you do that?

Managing director Jeremy Dee

is third generation in the family business.

- So what's modern in the world of Love Hearts,

what's the newest messages?

So we've got, "#Selfie."

[Gregg laughing]

We've got, "Take a selfie."

"Skype me."

- No! - "Tweet me," as well.

- There must be guys and girls working here over the years

that have passed each other the odd sweet?

Countless, Gregg.

We were actually voted

Britain's most romantic workplace.

In fact, one in four of the people who work here

are actually in a relationship with each other.

So that's 61 couples.

- No way! - It's true.

- One in four people who work here

have a relationship with someone else...

- Who works here? - That's right.

- Is the ease of the chat-up line

on a Love Heart responsible for that.

- Do you think, in some way? - It may be.

- It may be just the fact of working in a sweet factory

with magical, fun products.

- So many sweets, such little time.

We, each of us, on average, consume 1,300 sweets a year.

But when did we start eating sweets?

[upbeat folk music]

- It's hard to believe, but back in the Middle Ages,

sugar wasn't seen as a treat.

It was used as a medicine.

Sugar was considered to have healing properties

and was used to treat a whole host of illnesses.

I'm meeting with food historian Seren Evans-Charrington

to find out why.

- When people came down with some form of ailment,

whether it be a sore throat or a digestive upset,

they were going into the spice cabinet

and looking what was in there.

So, you know, caraway seeds, coriander, nutmeg, cloves.

Sugar was considered a spice.

And it was considered a medicinal product,

something that had great medicinal properties.

[upbeat folk music]

- Eating sugar does release endorphins

so they may not have understood why,

but it made our poorly ancestors feel better.

But it was expensive.

- At one point, you know, this amount of sugar,

just this spoonful is a day's wages.

- That would all change in the 16th century

with the Tudors.

They opened trade routes that made sugar 10 times cheaper

and they soon developed a sweet tooth.

- It's when it becomes that little bit cheaper

that the balance begins to tip and it starts being,

"Well, actually, this is good for me,

"this is medicinal.

"But goodness, this tastes good!"

[upbeat music]

- Not only did the Tudors love sugar,

but they wrongly believed it could stop flatulence

so served it after meals.

Seren's unearthed a recipe for Tudor comfits,

sweets made from medicinal spices

like licorice roots and caraway seeds

covered in layers of sugar.

First, we melt half a pound of sugar

until it's boiling at around 130 degrees.

- Ooh, look, it's bubbling up there.

Oh, yes.

- We're starting with the caraway seeds.

They're so tiny!

- Once they've been coated, we remove them to cool down.

This is the first coat.

We have 20 to 30 more coats more to go.

What we're looking to do is separate them out

and we want one caraway seed per comfit.

So fiddly and slow.

- I can't imagine doing an entire jar of these.

- Next, we're sugar-coating strips of licorice root.

- You can see they're not easy to get tidy.

No, they're not.

- You really have to be-- - It's a real art.

It's a real fiddle.

[upbeat music]

- After layer upon layer of messy sugar-coating,

we're finally able to try our first Tudor sweets.

- Actually, they look quite delicious.

They do, don't they?

- I'll try a little caraway seed.

Here we go.

Mmm!

- It's a real capsule of flavor, isn't it?

- Mmm! That's sweet and very, very spicy.

- Licorice. - Licorice, that's the biggest.

- It's too hard for my teeth! - [both laughing]

- If you were having some of those at the end of a meal

as some form of digestive aid,

yeah, you'd remember it.

[gentle upbeat music]

They may be basic,

but these Tudor sugar-coated spices

were the forerunners of the modern boiled sweet.

Within 150 years, the first spice-flavored sweets

like barley sugars

and licorice lozenges had appeared.

And we still enjoy those today.

[machinery whirring]

[sweets clattering]

- [timer beeping] - [upbeat music]

- It's been four hours since the sugar delivery

and already, this factory has made 30 million sweets.

I've been let into the secrets of making powder sweets.

Next stop is my favorite, boiled sweets.

With boiled sweets,

instead of compressing dry sugar,

like they do for powder sweets,

they turn it into a liquid and then mold it.

And team leader Bill Barnes

is the man to show me how they do it.

He's been working here for over 40 years.

- It is today, Gregg. We're making Fruity Pop lollies.

I'm gonna show you,

from start to finish, how we do them.

- I'm in your hands, mate, go on.

We'll have a look.

- This cooker boils the ingredients

to dissolve the sugar and create a smooth syrup.

- I'll just show you a bit if you want.

See how watery it is?

That will become a lolly.

It just looks like water out of the tap, don't it?

But it'd take the skin off your fingers.

- Bill is making over 3/4 of a million lollies today

and this isn't even his busiest time of the year.

- When it comes up to Halloween,

I will be running 22 hours a day.

I'll be running seven days a week

and nights will come on.

I just can't make enough lollies.

- Do you like that time or do you hate that time?

Love it.

I've always got something to do.

Honestly, the more busy I am, I'm happy.

Why do you love this so much?

- I've just been here all my life.

It's just what I do.

[gentle groovy music]

- After introducing color and flavor to the sugar syrup,

they also add citric acid.

This is what naturally makes citric fruits tangy.

Whoa!

That's a pretty thing!

- The mix is then poured out onto a conveyor belt

to start cooling down.

Two plows fold the mixture over

so the top doesn't form a skin as it cools.

- So now it's gonna go over here into the batch rollers.

The liquid lolly mix

falls onto the top of a plastic cone

and flows downwards as metal rollers

spread it out to an even thickness.

Rollers at the bottom then pull it off the cone

in a perfectly uniform lolly snake.

- And you reckon every chunk of that now,

if it's cut off at the right lolly shape,

that'll be about eight grams?

I'm hoping so.

[laughs]

- Next, the lolly mix is cut into small pieces

and each one needs a stick.

Shall I put some sticks in?

Only pick a few up at a time.

- Turning out 800 lollies a minute

means this machine gets through a lot of them.

[upbeat electronic music]

[Gregg laughing]

- Isn't it harder than it looks, though?

Honestly!

- Deep inside this machine, the sticks are added,

but even though the lollies look finished,

they still need to cool for 20 minutes

before they can be wrapped.

[upbeat pop-folk music]

- As a nation, we've got some definite favorites

when it comes to sweets.

In fact, some of the top-selling products

have been around for over 100 years.

So, what makes us go back to the same sweets

time and time again?

According to Professor Barry Smith

of the University of London,

it's down to our very British sense of taste.

When we like sweets, it's not just the sugar.

That's not it.

It's gotta be the sugar in combination

with other things.

There might be fruity flavors,

there might be a bit of sourness.

There might be a bit of salt.

And then it's about the order in which things happen

when in the mouth.

To prove his point,

Professor Smith has asked me

to eat a jelly baby

and describe the flavors I'm experiencing.

What do you get at first?

- Sweet. - Great.

- So you're getting the sugar coating straight away.

- There's a bit of a burn, it's tangy.

- Tangy, good. Fruity, that's the fruit.

- Really fruity, really delicious.

So, the burn is interesting.

That's a little bit of the bitter sour acids.

What are you left with?

The sweetness and now it's over.

Now I'm sad.

- [Cherry laughing] - Did you like it?

I loved it.

- That's the flavor profile that British people rather like.

From sweet to tangy fruit, bitter-sour, back to sweet.

That's a big hit. People like that.

[upbeat dance music]

- Of course, that could just be me

so we've created an experiment

with three identical-looking sweets

that have three very different primary tastes.

A is sweet, B is salty, C is sour.

First, we're testing British people

who, like me, should prefer the sweet taste of A.

- So, which one is the most familiar?

A.

- Is it quite a comforting taste,

like, of your childhood?

- Yeah, it tastes like wine gums.

I'm gonna go this first one.

That's quite nice.

You like it?

- Sweet. - Sweet, yep.

Definitely the first one.

- Yeah? Which is your favorite one?

I'm gotta say A.

- It's a bit more fruity and light.

I think I like that one more.

The majority of Brits

we asked really did prefer sweet A.

But it turns out the sweets we love here

don't always go down well in other countries.

Two parts of the world

with extremely different tastes to us

are Japan and Scandinavia.

According to Professor Smith,

the Scandinavians in this cafe should prefer sweet B,

which starts with a salty taste.

Ugh!

Salt, salt, salt.

I feel like I need to drink a pint of water.

- But what will the Scandinavians think?

The second one, B.

- Definitely B. - I'm B.

- And do you eat lots of salt in the diet?

- Massively. - Salt.

- You like it? - Yeah, I like it.

- Would you have eaten sweets like this

when you were small, when you were young?

- Yes, salty licorice in Sweden, yeah.

- Incredibly, 80% of Scandinavians

chose salty-sweet B,

but what about Japanese people?

They should show a strong preference

for the sour flavor of sweet C.

- First impression? - Wow!

- Wow. - Holy moly!

Yeah. Be brave.

- I think my eyes have exploded.

Gosh. They're very sour.

- Mm-hm. - Tangy, really tangy.

- Tangy. - Not getting loads of sweet.

Yes.

- I prefer C. I think it's my favorite one.

Yes, this kind of flavor I used to eat in my childhood.

- I like this one the best. - Right.

- Reminds me of the citrus fruit we have in Japan.

- It turns out 60% of Japanese people

we asked preferred sweet C.

So, that really worked.

The British people really went for the first option.

The Scandinavian people

really loved the licorice salty one.

- They're used to having foods that have got high salt content.

They cure fish and meat with salt.

That's something that's in their background.

- And most of the Japanese people

really liked that kind of citrusy,

sour flavor.

They preferred less sweet

and, again, that'll be in the diet.

And, of course,

when we are exposed to different things,

either when we're children, it might even be in utero,

that's going to determine some of our palate,

so there's a mixture of biology

and there's a mixture of culture.

[upbeat pop-rock music]

- Different countries might have different tastes,

but, judging from today, one thing is clear,

we all share a love for sweets.

[upbeat music]

[timer beeping]

Back at the factory,

I'm in the boiled sweet department

with Bill Barnes, making lollies.

We've added the sticks,

but they're still too hot to wrap.

Can I get one off?

- Yeah, yeah, just take one off.

Quite soft, aren't they?

[Gregg chuckling]

If you suck one of them now, the flavor comes out

because it's still warm.

- Can I? - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- While it's hot, the flavor is released quicker,

making it taste more intense.

- Am I one of the very few people

lucky enough to have had a hot lolly?

Yeah! [laughing]

- Next, the soft lollies need to harden

before they can be wrapped.

[Gree laughing]

So they're sent to a special cooling machine.

♪ Shake it up, baby, now ♪

♪ Shake it up, baby ♪

♪ Shake it up, baby ♪

♪ Twist and shout ♪

♪ Shake it up, baby ♪

♪ Shake it up, baby ♪

♪ Come on and work it on out ♪

[lolly tapping]

20 minutes.

- Does shaking them stop them sticking together?

- If you didn't have it shaking,

they'd just go down and they'd flatten.

So, because they roll like that, they keep the shape.

- You know that looks a little bit nuts,

Bill, don't you?

- Yeah. It's good, innit, though?

Fantastic.

[upbeat electronic music]

- Finally, the lollies are sent to wrapping machines

that can each wrap 800 lollies a minute.

But before they're sent to be boxed up,

there's just one thing left to do,

unofficial quality control.

Cheers!

[forklift truck beeps]

- [timer beeping] - [upbeat pop-rock music]

Five hours after the morning sugar delivery

and the factory has produced 35 million sweets.

I've made powder sweets and boiled sweets.

Next up is the chew sweets.

And their top seller is the Drumstick lolly.

Team leader Paul Jones has been overseeing their production

for more than 10 years.

- The first part we're gonna go to

is what we call the turrell

and this is where the syrup is actually made.

- This vat contains glucose, sugar, water, and vegetable oil.

- And as you can see, that's the syrup there now

and it's just ready for cooking.

- How many sweets will that make?

An awful lot.

We probably make 120,000 Drumsticks.

- These lollies start their life in the same way

as boiled sweets.

The syrup is heated up to dissolve the sugar.

- It doesn't smell the same anymore.

It smells like toffee.

That's what it basically is.

We've just basically got a syrup hot mix.

[gentle mystical music]

- Next, they add a magic ingredient

that transforms the syrup into a chewy sweet,

marshmallow foam.

- So, I can show you, here, a bit of marshmallow.

- It's a mix of gelatin and glucose

that's been whipped up in an aerating machine.

- Why do you add the marshmallow foam?

It's to make it,

rather than being a hard-boiled sweet,

we've now added in a foam to make it chew.

- This sugar syrup and marshmallow mixture

is divided into two parts

for the different colored stripes in the lolly.

From this point on,

we're going to add the flavors in this point and the colors.

- One half has milk flavor and citric acid added.

The other half has raspberry flavor

and color added.

- That's looking like the sweet.

White one side, pink the other.

Don't touch it,

'cause it's over 100 degrees centigrade.

Lt doesn't look like it, but it is.

You'll have never felt so alive if you touch it.

- This greased conveyor belt has water running underneath it

to cool the mixture.

It's now ready to be collected

and sent on to the next stage of the process.

- Let me have a go of this, please.

- Right, I'll get you some gloves.

- Can I? - Yeah.

Is that one ready?

- That one's ready and that one's ready.

No pressure. There you are.

[Gregg groans]

[upbeat groovy music]

[Gregg grunts]

- [Gregg groaning] - [boxes clattering]

Got him! Go!

Oh, I've got some pink in me white!

Cover it over so no one sees.

Next stop,

one of the strangest places in the factory,

[upbeat funky music]

the slab room.

Here, blob wrangler Steve Gough

forms the chew mix into disc shapes

and, when it's cooled to just the right firmness,

he feeds it into the batch roller.

How difficult is this?

Not hard.

- Not hard? - No.

- Have you gotta be strong? - Yeah.

- [box thuds] - Yay-hey-hey!

[upbeat groovy music]

- As Steve feeds them into the batch roller,

all I've got to do

is stop them from sticking together.

Oh, no!

- Oh, no. - [chuckling]

It's sticking to me!

Right, you handle these really simply.

I've made a right pig's ear of it.

This cone of stickiness

is bigger than a football at the top end,

but it tapers down at the bottom

as rollers slowly pull the mixture out.

[upbeat groovy rock music]

The lolly snake now enters a machine that can cut it,

squash it around a stick, and wrap it

in just 1/4 of a second.

Machine operator Emma Bartley

has been working at the factory for just six months.

- Did you see me put that pink slab on?

You did really well.

If you don't put it in right,

you won't get the swerve right.

You seem to be a bit of a Drumstick expert.

I've had my family work here since about the 1960s,

so both grandmothers used to work here,

my brother worked here,

I've had five cousins that work here.

[laughs]

My mum and dad met here, and my mum left to have me,

so here I am.

- So, your mum and dad met here.

Have you met anyone here?

- I've met plenty of friends here.

- Yeah, but I mean- - No!

[laughs]

Anyone you like the look of?

'Cause I could quickly put a word in for you.

- Oh, I'll have to have a word with you about that secretly.

[laughs]

[upbeat groovy rock music]

- This firm has been family-run since it opened in the 1920s.

In fact, Britain has a fine tradition

of family-run confectionery businesses.

Cherry's been learning how one Lancashire family

turned a niche product into a worldwide success.

- [upbeat folky music] - [birds cawing]

- I'm finding out about a very special sweet

that's been clearing noses

and soothing throats for over 100 years.

Here in Fleetwood, Lancashire, the Lofthouse family

has been making Fisherman's Friends since 1865.

This sweet success story was originally a solution

to a very local seafarers' problem.

[upbeat gentle rock music]

I'm going onboard

Fleetwood's last remaining trawler,

to meet Tony Lofthouse.

Tony.

It's really, really nice to meet you.

- His great-grandfather James had an apothecary shop in town

and first invented this cough medicine

for Fleetwood's deep-sea trawlermen.

Trawlers in those days

were beginning to go into colder and colder waters

and this weather affected the fishermen's chests,

so they made a liquid, a linctus.

The linctus worked fine, but the bottles broke at sea,

so he went and had another think

and he came up with the same sort of thing,

but in a solid form, in a lozenge,

and they started to take those.

- It's so clever. How did it get its name?

- They used to go in the shop and say,

"Could I have some of my friends, please?"

So, Fisherman's Friend.

At the factory,

Tony has collected some family treasures

from the old apothecary shop,

including the original cough syrup.

- We have one single bottle left.

Wow!

So, this is very precious.

Very precious, yes.

I'm really nervous to hold it.

"Dose, five to 15 drops on sugar,

"three times a day after food."

I'm gonna give that back to you

because that is a little piece of British history.

- Thank you. - And I don't wanna drop it.

- Me neither. [laughing]

- Once Tony's great-grandfather

turned the syrup into cough sweets,

for over 100 years,

it was sold mostly to local fishermen.

But, after the fishing industry declined in the 1970s,

the family decided to look to other markets.

Tony's wife Doreen had the idea

to start selling the throat sweets to shops

around the country.

They proved so popular

that the company has continued to grow ever since.

[upbeat pop-rock music]

Today, they make five billion lozenges a year

and sell to over 100 different countries.

The original flavor throat sweet

is made using sugar, licorice,

menthol, and eucalyptus oil,

but that's not the only flavor they make.

- We have 15 different flavor variants.

- Tropical? - Tropical!

- Duncan Lofthouse now runs the company

and he's fifth-generation in the family business.

- 97% of our output is exported.

Really?

What's the strangest place you export to?

Papua New Guinea, maybe.

Who likes the cherry ones?

- That is the favorite in our second biggest market,

which is Thailand.

They love cherry in Thailand?

Yes, indeed.

It's looked upon as a strong-flavored candy.

How funny!

Absolutely.

[upbeat pop-rock music]

It's been so wonderful today

to see something so quintessentially British

is loved around the world.

[upbeat music]

[timer beeping]

- I'm at the Swizzels factory in New Mills, Derbyshire.

Ln just six hours,

they've turned nearly 22 tons of sugar

into 40 million sweets.

In the jellies department on the first floor,

they make classic gummy sweets

using sugar, glucose, and gelatin.

[sweets rattling]

But one of their sweets follows a different recipe.

Carl Pilkington oversees their production.

What are we making here?

We're making Squashies.

- Squashies would just be a normal jelly sweet

if it wasn't for one very special ingredient.

We use apple pulp down here.

- Apple pulp? - Apple pulp, yes.

That's to hold the body,

that's to make the product stay together.

Wow. How does that work?

Do you know? I'm not very good at chemistry.

- When you've got gelatin, it's very stretchy,

and you're putting air inside that

and you want that to hold the air in,

otherwise, it'll all collapse and just become a jelly,

but, because we want it to be a foam product,

we put apple pulp in.

It makes it strong. It holds on to the air.

- After adding color and flavor,

the mix is pumped to the depositing room.

- Now, here's where we start making the sweets.

- This is where it's squirted into molds.

- Do you know how many of these you're making a day?

There's 240 on there.

240 sweets in a tray

and you're doing a tray like nearly every second.

That's millions and millions of sweets.

- Millions and millions of sweets, yes.

- From here, these trays of gooey sweets

need to be put in the oven.

- Can I put this in the oven? - Sure.

- Where's the oven? - The oven's just down there.

It's oven three.

- Because of their moisture content,

they'll need to bake 24 hours to dry them out.

It's quite a tight space, mate, innit?

Very, very tight space.

- That means, of all the sweets in the factory,

these take the longest to make.

- Straighten it up. Just watch your wall, there.

You made it! Filled your first oven.

- They've got eight of these ovens

running 24/7,

which is how they can produce 1 1/2 billion

individual sweets every year.

So, now you can touch one.

- Can I eat it? - Of course, you can.

- Yeah, it's not an easy texture to make, is it?

- No. - It's neither hard nor soft.

No, not at all.

- [euphoric upbeat music] - [timer beeping]

All around the factory,

millions of sweets are being wrapped,

bagged, and boxed,

whether it's with hi-tech robot arms

or the old-fashioned way.

Soon, there will be powdered and boiled sweets,

jellies, and chews ready to be dispatched.

On the ground floor of the powder sweet department,

I'm helping Adele Thomas and Julia Hughes

on the packing line.

- Why would you shake them like that?

- Because any tablets that are broken or half-tablets-

Fall through the hole.

Fall through those holes.

- And down here, they're just having a dance.

Yep.

It's where they get straightened up

into the channels.

- Oh! That checks for holes-- - Yep.

- That puts them in straight lines.

Yep.

- Do you know what this reminds me of?

- No. - The M25!

- This machine can wrap 100 packets of sweets

every minute,

but it's down to Adele and Julia to check the quality

and then box them up.

Put 24 in a box.

- Yeah, but how do I know I've got 24?

- Because when they're in right, they lie flat.

- Three rows? - Three rows of eight.

- But if you're picking them up in a big chunk like that,

you're not checking the quality.

I am!

Years of experience.

You can feel the good and the bad.

All good.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.

I'm not very good at this, am I?

Give you another 28 years,

you'll be able to do it perfect.

[Gregg laughs]

[upbeat dance music]

- 24 hours ago, we had 56 tons of raw sugar.

I've seen it colored and flavored,

pressed, boiled, stretched, rolled, and wrapped.

Now, in this distribution warehouse,

there are 100 million sweets ready to be dispatched.

They'll head across the UK,

with the Welsh taking the crown for eating the most sweets,

but they're also sent all over the world,

from Australia to Norway,

where they eat more Love Hearts per person

than anywhere else.

And all of these sweets come from this traditional,

family-run sweet factory in Derbyshire.

- It's impossible to escape the sense of tradition here.

I mean, they're making sweets that I grew up with.

I can clearly remember having them as a child,

going to my local shop with my pennies.

- And it's great to see that the art of British sweet-making

is still going strong today.

- And do you know what I love more than absolutely anything?

It's obvious that Britain has got

just as sweet a tooth as it had 50 years ago

when I had my first sweets.

[gentle majestic music]