FAMILY-run bakery business Warburtons is on target to turn out more than one million crumpets a week at its Stockton factory - a month after opening a £2m crumpet plant at the site.

Its Yarm Road bakery produces crumpets six days a week for supermarkets and independent stores in the North, employing 187 people.

Warburtons acquired the site from collapsed firm Rathbones in 2005 and spent £6.5m refitting it before its reopening in 2006. A further investment saw the crumpet plant open at the end of last year.

General manager Michael Fallon said: "It's amazing to go from zero crumpets to one million in only a month.

"We have exceeded expectations and that's down to the skills and commitment of all the people who work here."

He said Teessiders were particularly keen on crumpets, getting through 76,000 packs - or nearly half a million crumpets - last month.

The crumpet production line in Stockton is on target for full production by the end of the month, when it will hit the one million crumpets a week mark.

The Stockton plant also produces loaves, rolls and fruit bread. The company has another site in the North-East, at Newburn, in Newcastle.

The sites are part of a group of 13 bakeries and 12 depots around the country, producing more than two million products a day.

Now the UK's leading independent baker, Warburtons was established in a grocery shop in Bolton by Thomas and Ellen Warburton, in 1876.

Today, the business is run by the fifth generation of the Warburton family, including chairman Jonathan Warburton, whose voice can be heard in the firm's TV ads.