DID you know when you bite into a Tesco pancake in a few weeks time, it will have started life at Bicester's very own Willy Wonka Factory.

Or when you tuck into a Starbucks muffin, Waitrose hot cross bun or Subway roll many of their ingredients will have stemmed from the town's sweetest hidden asset, Bicester Bakels.

But its not Oompa Loompas working behind the scenes, its almost 200 staff at the factory, off Launton Road, who create a host of mouth-watering ingredients used in some of the country's biggest bakery brands.

The factory has been expanding year on year since moving to Bicester in 1995 with just six workers and now creates about 27,000 tonnes - the equivalent weight 156 blue whales - in ingredients each year.

These ingredients are shipped all round the country and most poignant at the moment is the hot cross bun aroma that hits you as you walk through the factory doors.

From the glaze on Marks and Spencer's hot cross buns to the cross on Waitrose hot cross buns, they both started life in Bicester and the latest addition to the tastebuds-teasing line includes a £1.5m investment into caramel.

The new line includes eight different types of caramel that can be used in various ways either straight out the jar, baked or flavoured for a host of treats for a sweet-tooth.

British Bakels managing director Paul Morrow said: "This year we celebrate our 70th anniversary but we have been in Bicester full time for 27 years now.

"We currently employ about 190 people and of those the majority of people in the factory are local to Bicester and have come from local schools.

"I fully anticipate breaking the 200 staff barrier by the end of the year."

The Bicester-based factory supplies more than 500 different bakery ingredients to brands around the UK such as KFC's brioche buns, the coffee icing on Sainsbury's choux buns or its caramel in Marks & Spencer coffee caramel bites.

But Mr Morrow said the overall favourites tend to be the country oven multiseed bread mix and the caramel millionaires squares.

Mr Morrow added: "All our products require the baker to do something with them before the finished product.

"We are on average producing about 100 to 120 tonnes a day.

"It takes a lot of time and effort from all our bakers."

The latest investment has introduced the caramel line 'True Caramel' created using new machinery including pressure and vacuum cookers and cleaning equipment.

Mr Morrow added: "We operate across all five continents and, with the global caramel ingredients market forecast to be worth £2.1 billion by 2021, we made this investment to create a state of the art caramel production facility to serve the Bakels Group and its customers worldwide."