A world of pure imagination at Lily O'Brien's

Just five people have been entrusted with the secret recipe for Lily O’Brien’s. Liz O’Brien isn’t one of them — but she manages to get a rare tour of the chocolate factory as they create 200,000 eggs and 24,000 bunnies for the booming Easter market.

ANYONE familiar with the film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory will know just how sought after one of Willy Wonka’s ‘golden tickets’ were.

Just five of the elusive tickets were hidden in chocolate bars worldwide and for anyone who peeled back the wrapper to reveal one, a trip to Wonka’s spectacular chocolate factory was guaranteed.

The reality of a chocolate factory, of course, isn’t ever-lasting gobstoppers and chocolate fountains. But it’s amazing to think that every year about 1,200 tonnes of chocolate is produced at of Lily O’ Brien’s chocolate factory in Newbridge, Co Kildare — that’s the equivalent of 400 adult elephants, 80 double decker buses, or if aviation is your thing, that’s 6.1 empty jumbo jets.

It’s rare that Lily’s opens its doors to the public, but when it does — and I am one of the lucky few to get a pre-Easter tour — production manager Sean Kelly says people often expect to see scenes from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

“Sometimes when we get visitors coming in and they ask, ‘Is it really true that you have a chocolate lake in there?’ And I just say, ‘Eh, no’.

“I think it’s probably Willy Wonka that makes them think that because I’ve had that question asked of me a few times.”

Since breaking in to the Easter market in 1995, Lily’s has produced 1.1m eggs and 160,000 bunnies — that’s 211 tonnes of chocolate.

“It is interesting working here; you certainly never get bored here that’s for sure.

“As production manager no two days are the same. You have different schedules, different issues and challenges — and of course there’s trying to not eat too much chocolate,” Kelly says.

It’s very easy to see how that could be a major challenge. Even before you walk inside you’re greeted by an intense chocolaty aroma wafting through the air. At reception there were samples of broken chocolate for the taking and in a meeting room where I met managing director Eoin Donnelly, there were samples of ‘experimental’ chocolate. I gowned up in a hair-net, white coat, high-visibility vest — even protective socks over my shoes. I removed all jewellery, washed my hands and was led to the factory floor — ready for the magic.

OK, so as Sean had warned me, there weren’t any chocolate lakes to swim in and there weren’t any Oompa Loompas, but everywhere I looked there was chocolate, in some delicious shape or form.

Liquid-milk, dark and white chocolate flowed freely from taps into swirling pools. Machines overhead churned as they mixed chocolate with various ingredients. There were little blobs of chocolate being squirted from pipes into 30 different types of moulds, similar to ice-cube trays. Conveyer belts whizzed little chocolate treats past my eyes.

It took almost everything in me to not run my finger through the chocolaty flows, or grab a handful of sweets from the production line. I resisted, not because of willpower, but because I was under the watchful eye of Sean.

Each machine — some worth hundreds of thousands of euro — was manned to ensure the process involved in making each little sweet went like clockwork. Once the outer shell of the sweet is created, it’s then sent through different processes. The chocolate has to be set, a filling deposited in to it; then it has to be shaken, cooled, flipped over, sealed with a further layer of chocolate and decorated before being sent through a metal detector ahead of packaging to ensure it’s safe to eat.

Fewer than five people have been entrusted with the secret Lily O’Brien’s recipe, which is mixed in Belgium — the home of superior chocolate, before being delivered by 26-tonne capacity tankers in liquid form — milk, dark and white — to the Kildare factory, where on average 110 people work.

During its most demanding periods, Lily’s employs anything up to an additional 180 staff. Christmas is by far their busiest time, followed by Easter, Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day. Few staff are allowed sample chocolate on the floor and, according to Eoin Donnelly, even they have to be rotated so that nobody feels they’re indulging too much.

Donnelly admits it’s hard to resist chocolate when you’re surrounded by it. “I’m really bad, if I start eating chocolate at 9.30am I have it on the hour, every hour; I just can’t help myself with it and there’s been many a day when I’ve not had lunch purely because I’ve had too much chocolate.

“It sounds great until you’ve had 12 different versions of caramel and you’ve only just had breakfast — but I suppose it’s a nice problem to have.”

Ireland’s Easter chocolate market last year was worth €36.6m, that’s about 17m units of chocolate — eggs, bunnies and bars. Of that, Lily’s was the top performing premium Irish chocolate brand.

The company started out in 1992 as a one woman show, the brain-child of Mary Ann O’Brien, who Donnelly affectionately describes as “crazy, creative, passionate, hands-on”.

“Everyone thinks that we all work for Lilly Wonka and, if you’re looking for a Willy Wonka type comparison, Mary Ann would come closest of all.”

It was from her Kildare kitchen with little more than two saucepans and a wooden spoon that O’Brien started her mini-enterprise. The business, named after her daughter, quickly grew and has since become a strong international brand with exports accounting for more than 85% of annual turnover.

A Senator and co-founder of the Jack and Jill Foundation — which provides support for sick children — O’Brien remains the company’s driving force. Just last year Lily O’Brien’s won the Irish Export Industry Food and Drink Exporter Award.

Easter production starts in January, so that retailers including Supervalu, Tesco and Dunnes Stores in Ireland, Sainsbury’s and Waitrose in the UK, can have products on the shelves from as early as February. Lily’s also sells products in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Dubai, the USA, Australia and the company supplies premium desserts to airlines worldwide.

During my visit, staff were also busy perfecting a giant chocolate egg that stood 7ft 10” tall and weighed about 850kg. The egg is so big it was two-weeks in the making.

It’s an inch thick and during production had to be weighted at the bottom to avoid cracking. It will be used as a centrepiece for the Lily O’Brien’s seasonal pop-up shop in Kildare Village which will sell Easter goodies.

This year alone, Lily O’ Brien’s has produced about 200,000 Easter eggs, 24,000 bunnies and 17,000 baskets — that’s about 35 tonnes of chocolate — for its Easter market.