PRIME Minister David Cameron has praised a Dunstable food factory – which was raided for illegal workers earlier this year – for its successful exports.
Honeytop Speciality Foods in Verey Road, on the Woodside Industrial Estate, supply major UK retailers, including McDonalds, Tesco and Sainsbury’s, and provide naan breads for the Sharwoods brand.
And in Mr Cameron’s speech about exporting and growth at the British Film Institute IMAX in London on Thursday, he highlighted the “boldness” of Honeytop.
The PM said: “It’s not just the film industry where Britain is excelling. We are currently, and I promise you all of these are true, selling tea to China, vodka to Poland, cheese to France.
“There’s a baker in Dunstable selling naan bread to India. Fracino in Birmingham sell coffee-makers to Italy. There is even a firm in Anglesey that is selling canoes to the Eskimos.
“So, we mustn’t talk ourselves down about the inventiveness, creativity, energy and ability of British businesses to get out there and sell to the rest of the world.
“British SMEs (small and medium enterprises) are already doing some incredible things. But we urgently need more of them to follow that boldness.”
The baker in Dunstable that Mr Cameron mentioned is on the Houghton Regis border and when contacted by the Gazette, a Downing Street spokesman confirmed that he was referring to Honeytop.
But the PM may not have been aware that six illegal workers were arrested in a UK Border Agency swoop on Honeytop in June. The raid saw more than 100 officers deployed and was the largest operation in the east of England for several years.
Around 200 employees were individually taken through immigration checks and six were found to have no right to be in the UK.
The five men and one woman were taken to Dunstable Police Station before being transported to an immigration detention centre to be deported.
Three of the illegal workers – a Pakistani man, 47, an Indian woman, 30, and a Ghanaian man, 24, – had overstayed their visas. The others – two Indian men, aged 36 and 25, and a 22-year-old Iranian man – had entered the UK illegally.
At the time, Honeytop owner William Eid said he believed the raid would not affect his company’s “first class” reputation. No one at the business was available for comment this week.
