Britain is going blueberry muffin crazy - and a Bradford bakery is cashing in.

Speedibake has taken delivery of 53 million of the little juicy indigo berries to satisfy the national craving.

The demand for wild blueberry muffins, which have knocked chocolate chip muffins off the shelves in the last few months, led the Speedibake bakery, in Cross Lane, to order its biggest batch ever from its Lincolnshire fruit supplier, J O Sims.

The Spalding firm put in a special order from its Canadian suppliers and now Speedibake is selling the muffins to supermarkets up and down the country.

The special delivery is 24 times the normal blueberry order because of the massive demand for the tasty, large-scale buns.

But why they are so popular is a mystery. Nobody - from the bakery to the supermarkets who buy them - can explain why packs of the indigo-speckled cakes are selling like... well, hot cakes.

A spokesman for Asda, which was recently taken over by American global retail chain Wal-Mart, put it down to the "Wal-Mart factor''.

He said: "We are selling 40,000 a week compared to 30,000 six months ago which must be because more people are interested in American-style produce.

"Speedibake's are Britain's best-tasting blueberry muffins and they are using the best wild blueberries in the business, so it is no surprise they are going so well.

"It must be because people are more interested in the sort of things Americans eat."

The picture was the same at Bradford-based Morrisons who said they had seen a 30 per cent rise in the sale of blueberry muffins in the past few weeks.

Gillian Hall, of the supermarket chain, said: "We are seeing a 30 per cent increase in blueberry muffin sales but we have been racking our brains to work out why. It could be that the blueberry is still a novelty fruit in the UK. We buy all our muffins from Speedibake and other muffin varieties are doing well."

The blueberries, which will make a total of three million of Speedibake's treats, were delivered to the factory in a 20-tonne container and loaded on to 24 pallets for use in the bakery.

And to make sure none of them escaped, the firm drafted in Ian Thompson, the Agricultural Councillor to the Canadian High Commission in the UK, and Keith Sims and Jim McKee, of J O Sims.

Tony Flinn, Speedibake's operations director, said: "It has been like a military campaign to get this delivery into the factory.

"We normally only take a small quantity of wild blueberries but demand for this product has meant that our order is 24 times larger than normal. The factory is a sea of muffins thanks to this delivery."

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