As Seen on Inside The Factory!

We are all very excited to report that we appeared in the latest series of Inside The Factory – which you can watch here: BBC iPlayer – Inside the Factory – Series 6: Ice Cream – where Gregg Wallace investigated how we make Honeycomb ice cream

Viewers of this fantastic programme were given the inside scoop – as they followed Gregg through the full process that goes in to making Mackie’s Honeycomb ice cream, from the milking of our lovely cows to the filling and freezing of the tubs.

Gregg was hosted by Kirstin, our NPD Director with the help of several of our team  – who were brave enough to volunteer to take part and talk about their work! You’ll meet David Smurthwaite (Head Cattleman), Morag Haggerty (Production Manager), Louise Hunter and Dierdre Henderson (from the Sweetie Kitchen) while discovering how we manage to produce more than 12 million litres of ice cream each year with fresh milk from our cows to create real dairy ice cream.

While some of the team were initially quite nervous – it was made fun by Gregg’s chat and the friendly film and sound crew. We found it very interesting to see how much work goes in to making the programme, a busy three full days of filming was required for the one-hour episode!

Beginning his tour with a visit to the byre, Gregg sees how the cows are able milk themselves. After this, Gregg helps make some honeycomb in the ‘sweetie kitchen’, where we make over 60 tonnes of Honeycomb annually. Gregg then follows his batch over to the mixing process in the ice cream dairy, where he was amused to hear the phrase used by the staff when keeping an eye on the ice cream’s consistency on the filling line.

The episode displays our “Sky to Scoop” ethos, showing how we manage each stage of the process on site, using renewable energy from our wind turbines and solar panels to power the ice cream dairy and make our own packaging.

An extra cool part of the visit was the time spent in our new twin drum spiral freezer, where a well togged-up Gregg and the crew step inside the freezer (despite the temperature of -35 C! and carefully guarded by our engineer team) to watch the tubs of ice cream being frozen and to learn why it is important to freeze the ice cream mix quickly and efficiently. That ensures that the final product is created with the desired smooth texture.  The spiral freezer is part of our newly installed Low Carbon refrigeration system, which will soon be fully running on ammonia and biomass heat – and is expected to reduce Mackie’s energy use and carbon emissions by up to 80%.

‘Inside the Factory’ is a BBC Two production that has been running since 2015, showcasing all things manufacturing. Gregg Wallace and Cherry Healey get exclusive access to some of the largest factories in Britain to reveal the secrets behind production on an epic scale.