Jonny Dee (Exec MBA class of 2011) is featured in the Daily Telegraph article about his family run company Swizzels Matlow.

Since Cadbury was taken over by Kraft in 2010, Swizzels Matlow is now the largest independent family-owned confectionery company in Britain, producing 250 lines of sweets, employing 600 people and with a turnover of more than £40 million a year. It started, according to one version of family folklore, in the early 1920s on a market stall in Hackney, London, with Maurice and Alfred Matlow selling jellied sweets.

In the 1950s the factory had about 20 lines of sweets; now it has more than 250. Sixty years ago the company produced five tons of chew sweets per week; now seemingly endless conveyor belts move 100 tons of pink slabs of chew through the long, thin factory every week.

The future is looking increasingly sweet: by the end of this year Britons will have eaten 267,000 tons of confectionery and spent £1.75 billion, expanding the market by 0.5 per cent, according to Mintel. Swizzels Matlow is doing even better - the company outperformed the confectionery market last year, growing 36 per cent, according to the research company Nielsen.

Foreign exports are growing, too. Swizzels Matlow exports 20 per cent of its sweets to more than 20 countries, mostly in Europe - Norway in particular likes Love Hearts. But people in Britain make up the bulk of sales.