Growing Bradford-based snack manufacturer Seabrook Crisps has secured more bank funding to drive its expansion in the South of England.

Family owned Seabrook, which in recent years has become the UK’s fastest growing potato crisp brand, has secured an additional £6.5 million from HSBC’s Yorkshire and North East corporate banking team.

It will use £2.5 million of the extra capital this year to improve its distribution network in the South.

The remainder will go to help the firm achieve its target of doubling turnover to £65 million by 2015.

Last year Seabrook’s managing director John Tague told Bradford business leaders that the firm’s ambitious growth strategy was likely to include a second factory either in the Midlands or the South of the country.

He said a second production base to handle an expanding range of products would be needed within the next five years. He told Bradford Chamber of Commerce members: “We have ambitious plans and intend to widen our crisp range, including some innovative new products.

“We currently use another crisp maker to handle extra capacity, but a second factory will be needed.

“We are proud to be a Bradford-based business but, as we become a national brand, it will make sense to have extra production elsewhere.

“This will make transportation easier.”

Mr Tague said Seabrook had invested £5.2 million in the Bradford factory over the past two-and-a-half years, including the first robotic packing machine of its kind in the UK snacks industry.

It now produces one million packets of crisps a day at its base in a former textile mill on Princeville Road where the carpet in reception has a potato pattern.

  • Read the full story in Monday's T&A