I visited Barnsley’s answer to Willy Wonka and this is what goes on inside his chocolate factory

There’s no elusive golden ticket required to get inside JJA Snack. Quite the opposite in fact. Owner Jamie Ashpole is keen to get as many people as possible through the doors. He wants to give young people in particular an insight into engineering and manufacturing.

“We have a massive skills shortage in the UK, not just in the chocolate industry but in engineering, manufacturing, STEM in general,” he says.

“I created (this) to show kids that manufacturing and engineering isn’t a dirty industry, it’s one of the most technologically advanced industries in the UK, behind aerospace and Formula 1. The technologies we use are super, super technical. I created the factory to try and show that and I thought what’s better than chocolate and robots as the hook?”

Since it opened its doors on Valentine’s Day last year, JJA Snack has been taking visitors on an educational and immersive journey into the world of chocolate making.

Helped by STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) ambassadors - his 14-year-old twins Danny and Ellie - Jamie takes schoolchildren, community groups and individual families inside his small-scale chocolate factory.

There, they learn how chocolate is sourced and made, focusing on engineering principles. They can sample different flavour combinations and also get to create their own chocolate products. “They see a real life chocolate factory,” Jamie, 47, explains. “The same technologies that Mars, Cadbury’s, Nestle and all of that use, we are using it here just on a considerably smaller scale.”

For his ‘day job’, through JJA Snack’s sister company JJA Pack, Jamie designs and builds machines for chocolate companies across the UK. His background is in service engineering. He has travelled across the world, designing, building and installing machinery, primarily in the dairy industry.

Then 13 years ago, he decided to go it alone, setting up his Rotherham-based JJA Pack business. Through that, he designs, produces, maintains and services food processing equipment, with chocolate and baked goods machinery his key specialism. His third company JJA Track is about monitoring machinery, using data analysis to predict any failures and identify issues to be rectified.

Jamie, who employs just five people across his three firms, says he wanted JJA Snack to inspire children to get involved in engineering and raise awareness of the STEM careers open to them.

"They might not know what cool things are out there in industry,” he says. “They don’t know that my day job is waking up and I get to go and play with chocolate machines every single day.”

“I was thinking how can I try to get kids involved,” he adds. “Ever since joining the chocolate industry I’ve always wanted to have my own brand of chocolate bar. I’ve always thought that would be really cool being the chief Oompa Loompa. So I thought let’s combine the two and go down this STEM route.”

When he launched nearing a year ago, Jamie’s focus for the chocolate factory was on education rather than production. But he says he soon realised he needed a revenue stream to help the business keep its doors open.

“The level of investment (in JJA Snack) was significant and JJA Pack have financed 95 per cent of it, we’re talking the best part of £120,000. To make this experience available to people, school kids, etcetera, I need to pay for this equipment.

"So now we create bespoke bars for the likes of Leeds Knights, Sheffield Steelers and various companies around South Yorkshire, like (Barnsley-based) Milk from the Hills for example.

"We also do Christmas markets, we’ve got a range of products we have created including sweet and salty popcorn with a milk and white chocolate drizzle, chocolate bars under our own branding and truffle sets.”

Next for Jamie is a planned move to Skills Street, a new partnership at Gulliver’s Valley Rotherham. Described as an immersive and innovative careers training experience, Skills Street aims to introduce the world of work to the next generation. The idea is that by visiting the street, people can explore a range of careers with shops, cafes and workspaces showcasing everything from banking, to baking, music and manufacturing.

Jamie plans to move the chocolate factory there in the early months of this year, with the hope of getting thousands more young people through the door. He wants to teach as many as possible about engineering through the entire chocolate bar manufacturing process.

"It’s really important that we embrace not just the guys who want to go to university to do engineering but the apprentices, the T Levels, all of it,” he says.

"Because without the youth coming through and learning about what we do, manufacturing in the UK will cease…We need to make sure that we are getting the next generation of engineers…

"You don’t have to be a straight A student to become an engineer, you don’t have to be a straight A student to do what I do. You’ve just got to have drive, determination and the willing to learn. If you’ve got that, you could be the greatest engineer on the planet through hard work.”

- To book to visit the chocolate factory, visit jjasnack.co.uk

- For more on Skills Street, visit skills-street.co.uk