Factory worker still passionate about making pies after 40 years

A pie-maker said she is still passionate about making pies after 40 years.

Gina Goldsmith started working at Holland's Pies near Accrington at 28 and now leads a production line at the factory.

The company is celebrating its 175th birthday this year and makes between 800,000 and 900,000 pies, pastries and puddings a week.

Chris Degenhart, general manager at Holland's Pies, said: "It's part of Lancashire. Making proper Lancashire pies, with proper Lancashire people making those pies, as they have done for generations."

Holland's started as a confectionery shop on Lower Deardengate in Haslingden in 1851, founded by John Whittaker.

Its first delivery van was purchased in 1927 and two years later the company bought a disused cotton mill in Baxenden near Accrington.

Inside the factory, fillings are cooked for hours in large open vats before being added to pastry and baked in a large moving industrial oven.

Production manager Tony Galgani told BBC Radio Lancashire that, alongside food testing equipment, staff lift out chunks of potato and squeeze them between their fingers to check that they are cooked.

"Our cookhouse process is traditional, I'm not sure that you'll find it anywhere else," he said.

Chris Degenhart agreed, saying that despite technological advances the "core processes are still very similar and authentic to how pies were made all those years ago."

When Gina joined the company in the 1980s she said pie-making was "a whole different ball game."

She has gone on to work "practically everywhere," she said, adding: "I love my job."

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