engineering

Worksop Factory

Worksop Factory is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Worksop Factory rather than just read about it. In short: The Worksop Factory is a main food manufacturing site in Bassetlaw District in north Nottinghamshire that makes well-known types of instant food, such as instant noodles, as well as well-known gravy products. History Unilever a site at East Bridgford.

Key takeaways

Worksop Factory belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Worksop Factory to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Worksop Factory from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Worksop Factory is a main food manufacturing site in Bassetlaw District in north Nottinghamshire that makes well-known types of instant food, such as instant noodles, as well as well-known gravy products.

History Unilever a site at East Bridgford. In July 1969, £750,000 was invested in a new plant for packet soups, to open in 1971. In 1969, the extension to the factory was begun by local MP Joe Ashton; it would employ 300 more people. A new factory was to be built in early 1975. The site was fined in September 1977. Packet soups moved to Kent in the early 1990s. A distribution centre was built in 1999, with another in Peterborough, which opened on 3 December 1999.

Industrial action In September 1977, a nine-week strike by the TGWU cost the company £5.5m.

Production In the mid-1980s, £2m was invested at the site. Cardboard for the tubs is provided by Sonoco Europe, in Chesterfield; the former Robinson Paperboard Packaging was bought in July 2011. Every day the site makes 3.7m Oxo cubes. Around 50 million Bisto gravy drums are made a year.

Oxo Oxo was made at Great Harwood from 1939 to December 1992, when production was moved to Worksop by Unilever. Around four hundred employees had been at the Great Harwood site in Lancashire, but Unilever had tried to build a new factory in the 1980s, which was blocked by the local council. After blocking a new factory in the 1980s, when Unilever announced to the local council, in 1990, it was leaving, the council attempted to stop Unilever leaving. Discussions were held in London with the local Conservative MP, Ken Hargreaves. In February 1991, it was announced that Oxo would move to Worksop, as part of Brooke Bond. Manufacturing equipment would move later in 1991. Manufacturing moved in December 1992. Oxo became part of Van den Bergh Foods in 1995 at Crawley.

Gravy and salt Saxa salt and Bisto were made at Middlewich in Cheshire until September 2008, which was the former Cerebos until 1968. Bisto and Paxo, moved from Greatham to Middlewich in 1968, and moved to Worksop in 2008, previously being made by RHM Foods. Middlewich had also made Paxo stuffing, now made in Kent. Prince Philip visited this Bisto factory on 25 June 1969. RHM had bought Cerebos for £61m in July 1968. Cerebos also owned Sharwoods sauces, which mostly made mango chutney; Cerebos had bought J.A. Sharwood in November 1962. Sharwoods was made from 1968 by RHM in Greatham in Teesside; this site was the former Greatham Salt and Brine Works, and was the headquarters of Cerebos; the site also made Atora suet, now made in Wales (Dafen, Carmarthenshire). RHM, itself, was formed in 1963. RHM exported over six hundred different products to seventy five countries.

Food sauces In 1995 Ragú sauce and Chicken Tonight started to be made at the site, the first in the UK; there were many TV advertisements. The process line was built by T Musk Engineering of Swadlincote, part of WT Parker.

Mushy peas Main variety of mushy peas were Marrowfat peas and Alaskan Blue. Peas were sorted at Worksop, in the 1960s, then processed elsewhere. Another pea plant was on George Street in Huntingdon, with 325 staff; it closed in 1966. Birds Eye was bought in 1943 by Unilever, but Worksop had nothing to do with frozen peas, this was all largely at Lowestoft in Suffolk.

Research It has the company research department for dried foods. The site had most collaboration, in research, with the Colworth research division, which was bought by Unilever in 1947. In the 1960s the Unilever Food Development Unit on Greyhope Road was at the Torry Food Science Laboratory, near Aberdeen, where it developed accelerated freeze drying, which the British government had required Unilever to investigate, during the Cold War. The site closed in July 1965.

Visits The site was featured on BBC Two on Tuesday 14 August 2018. In 2005 mathematician Marcus du Sautoy visited the factory, in the first part of his BBC Radio 4 series Five Shapes, where he discussed the cube, with Alan Mansbridge, head of production, and where he watched cubes being made on the production line; 40 million were made each week

See also Food Manufacturers Federation List of instant noodle brands

References

External links The site in June 1952 2018 BBC Two documentary

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Worksop Factory

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Worksop Factory claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Worksop Factory before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Worksop Factory ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Worksop Factory

In research: Worksop Factory appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Worksop Factory in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Worksop Factory is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Buildings and structures completed in 1982, Buildings and structures in Nottinghamshire, Dried foods, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Worksop Factory outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Worksop Factory in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Worksop Factory means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Worksop Factory out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Worksop Factory in simple terms?

Why does Worksop Factory matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Worksop Factory?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Worksop Factory.