Geary’s Bakery opens £36 million site to scale Jason’s Sourdough production

Geary’s Bakery opened a £36 million custom-built site in Leicester to expand Jason’s Sourdough, a move that shows how far a once-specialist loaf has pushed into mainstream bread sales. The new bakery, opened on June 25, was built after the company ran out of space at its existing site, and it is now being used to push production higher without losing the fermentation-led identity that made the brand.

The Leicester plant is Geary’s third and is expected to double production capacity, add 380 jobs and lift the workforce to around 950 by the end of the year. The site is coming online in phases, with the first phase already open and the second due in September. That staged ramp-up matters in sourdough, where scaling is not just a matter of running more dough through the line. It depends on process control, trained bakers and the discipline to keep a 24-hour fermentation rhythm consistent at higher volume.

Jason Geary has built that demand over a relatively short run. Jason’s Sourdough launched in 2020 and, by May 2025, was listed in more than 4,000 stores nationwide and in Ocado, reaching three million homes and becoming Britain’s fourth biggest bread brand after overtaking Roberts Bakery. The brand also won Bakery Brand of the Year at the 2025 Baking Industry Awards. Geary’s continues to supply major retailers including Aldi and M&S, putting a craft-style loaf in the same supply chains as Britain’s biggest everyday bakery labels.

The business behind the loaf is older than the brand it now revolves around. Geary’s was founded in 1906 and has operated for more than four generations as a family bakery business. The Unsworth family took a majority stake in November 2019, with Jason Geary staying on as managing director and Rob Unsworth becoming chairman. Geary’s says it now has 13 apprentices across bakery, engineering and operations and is recruiting eight new lead bakers, a reminder that industrial-scale sourdough still depends on people who can handle starter, timing and dough with care.

For Jason’s Sourdough, the new Leicester site is less a simple capacity upgrade than a test of whether the brand can keep its character as it grows. The loaf has already moved into national retail; the next challenge is making sure the same crumb, crust and fermentation profile survive the leap from baker’s craft to volume business.