ARCHY Cunningham had spent ten years building up his fast-expanding bakery in Bathgate.
So when a naan bread caught fire on a night-time production shift just over a year ago, sparking a huge blaze which gutted two-thirds of the site, he was understandably devastated.
But Cunningham rallied his 150 workers and rebuilt the bakery from
scratch with brand-new equipment – and is now on track to more than double turnover within three years.
Cunningham, who started his career at Allied Bakeries and Hoggs in Broxburn before joining UCB in 1997, was phoned at home at 10pm on 31 October, 2006, to be told the factory was burning.
"I was just gutted," he recalls. "I got to the factory, where ten fire engines were battling to put out the blaze. We'd just sold the factory to Finsbury Food Group a year earlier, so although it wasn't mine anymore, I still felt it was – and it was all my work that disappeared.
"I stayed there all night with the firefighters until it was put out. It was just total devastation."
Ironically, the naan bread which caught ablaze was in its last week of production – to be replaced by a more upmarket, gluten-free version.
The bakery, which transferred to Finsbury for £2.5 million in November 2005, has carved out a niche for itself within the gluten-free sector – an area that is becoming increasingly popular with consumers.
Managing director Cunningham immediately sprang into action, setting up a temporary generator and temporary phone lines so that his staff could inform customers of the problem.
Within just a few weeks, he had re-started production at one of the units, which had suffered only smoke damage in the blaze, while the other two were destroyed.
And Finsbury's latest set of accounts show that, in the year to 30 June, 2007, UCB managed to produce £5.8m of goods, despite being almost entirely shut for eight months of the 12-month period.
An insurance payout of £5m helped rebuild the factory, which Cunningham made sure was completed within seven months, while Cardiff-headquartered Finsbury – billed as the UK's number two cakemaker – shelled out a further £2.5m on additional new equipment for the bakery. The factory reopened last summer, with almost all of the same staff in place.
While one redundancy was necessary as a result of the fire, the rest of the staff were redeployed to Finsbury's other factories during the closure, including Campbell's cakes in north Lanarkshire and Coatbridge-based California cakes. Some workers even undertook night shifts at a nearby supplier to complete UCB's potato scone production.
Cunningham says: "No-one thought we could do it, but I knew we had to. I wanted to keep all of the customers we had and we managed not to lose any business except one small contract, but I am confident we will get even that one back in due course.
"Looking back on that seven months, it was hell, but it has almost been a blessing in disguise for the business.
"I like to think that, out of adversity, great things happen. It has been amazing, what we have achieved in such a short period of time."
Production of one of the firm's key products – a spiral-shaped doughnut called a yumyum which is supplied to a range of major supermarket chains – has tripled to around 12,000 per hour since the fire.
And he predicts that turnover, which now stands at £8.5m – just short of the £9m achieved in the year before the fire – will grow to £12m within a year, and between £20m and £25m by 2010.
He explains: "We are constantly looking for new products. We are launching a new range of artisan bread and a new, jam-filled yumyum.
"We're very lucky, because Finsbury allows us to stay pretty independent. I think we have a good future ahead of us."
