Manchester Plant

The site was essentially chosen due to the proximity to the Manchester Ship Canal, built by The Kellogg Company of Great Britain; the site in Manchester was chosen by Harry McEvoy (c.1902 - 3 November 1984), the managing director. It was the largest food manufacturing factory in Europe.[4] It was built in ten months.

The £500,000 five floor site opened on 24 May 1938, opened by a woman from north Nottinghamshire; her husband worked at the nearby Thoresby Colliery. The factory was the largest cereal factory in the British Empire, covering seven acres.[5] She had six children, and had been chosen in April 1938 from around five thousand applicants on Wednesday 27 April 1938.[6][7][8]

McEvoy would be chairman of the Cereal Foods Manufacturing Association from the start until 1967.

By the late 1980s, the factory was seven times larger, and the second-largest breakfast cereal factory in the world.[9]

Prince Philip visited on Friday 14 June 1963, where he met the same Nottinghamshire woman, now aged 70, who had opened the site in May 1938; she now lived in Breaston in south-east Derbyshire. The site was now 18 acres. He had visited Leigh Boys' Grammar School in the morning, and two other Manchester factories, leaving Liverpool Airport at 6.20pm.[10]

On Wednesday 22 May 1974, the factory was visited by the Prince of Wales.[11]

Margaret Thatcher, as Prime Minister, visited on the afternoon of Friday 15 January 1982. Mrs Thatcher had been warmly greeted earlier on the same day when she visited the University of Salford, with around three hundred students carrying black flags, and a draped coffin. She had visited the area by plane at Manchester Airport on a Royal Air Force aircraft, arriving back in north-west London at 6.30pm.[12]

On Sunday 5 January 2020, Channel 5 showed Secrets of the Kellogg's Factory, with food historian Polly Russell.[13][14]

BBC Two made an hour-long documentary on Tuesday 26 July 2016, looking at the production of Crunchy Nut, interviewing Professor of Nutrition Louise Dye and food historian Seren Evans-Charrington; the production of Coco Pops, made with Arborio rice; the addition of vitamin D with Professor of Immunology Adrian Martineau and nutritionist Angelique Panagos, and how from October to April in the UK there is not enough sunshine to make vitamin D.[15][16]

Food Unwrapped, with Kate Quilton of Channel 4 shown on Monday 7 September 2015 series 6 episode 2, visited the factory, to investigate how vitamins and iron were added to Cornflakes, where a nutritionist showed Kate that Cornflakes floating on water could be attracted by a magnet; the programme was made by Ricochet.[17]

On Sunday 10 April 2022, Channel 4 showed an hour-long documentary about the factory, with Amalia Diamanti of Greece, of Kellogg's research and development, with series editor Anushka Roberts, made by HLP Studios.[18]

On Thursday 11 August 1955, 28-year-old Harold Grupwell was caught in a revolving bran cooker, and killed.[19]

On the night of Sunday 22 October 1967, the site had a large fire, with 150 firemen attending.[20]

In May 1977, 1,400 factory workers went on strike.[21]

On Sunday 9 September 1979, workers went back to work after a ten-week strike, after accepting a £8.50 a week pay rise. [22]