Closing factory workers paid to help at food bank

Workers at a factory due to close in Oxfordshire are being allowed by their employer to help at a local food bank while production scales down.

Dutch coffee-making giant Jacobs Douwe Egberts (JDE) will close its plant in Banbury this year, after six decades in the town.

But teams of five workers have been allowed to work at the Banbury Breadline Project, while still being paid by JDE, to help support vulnerable members of the community.

Owner and organiser of the food bank Andrew Wickham said he liked to create a "family atmosphere" and that JDE had been a "great help".

Mr Wickham said as well as volunteers, staff had approached the Unite union to gather funds for his food bank on Cherry Road to build a new roof.

He said keeping people from queuing out of the rain was "a bonus for everybody", as they now see "200 people a week".

"And we're only open three days a week," he added.

Orion Phillips is one of the JDE employees helping out at Breadline on a Thursday and Friday.

He is one of about 160 employees who will lose their job when the the factory closes in August.

He said he had not needed to use one himself, "but seeing what it can do for people has been heart-warming".

JDE said closing the site - which first opened as a General Foods (GF) plant in the 1960s and employed thousands at its peak - was "not an easy decision to take".

They said a review found the costs involved in maintaining the decades-old infrastructure was "not financially viable".

A spokesperson from JDE Peet's said: "As we move ahead with the planned closure of the Banbury site by the end of 2026, colleagues have had the opportunity to volunteer some of their time toward local causes.

"They chose to offer their help to the Breadline Project, and we are pleased to have been able to support its work providing vital food assistance to Banbury and the surrounding areas."