A trio of talented young engineers are getting their teeth into life in the real workplace as they have been taken on as manufacturing apprentices at the new VBites factory in Peterlee as part of an exciting new partnership between the company and East Durham College’s apprenticeship team.
Owned by celebrity media personality, businesswoman and activist Heather Mills, VBites creates healthy, plant-based foods sold all over the world.
The three apprentices – Ben Bridges, 19 from Peterlee, Calvin Wise, 20 from West Rainton and Szymon Gruchala, 20 from Horden - are working at VBites’ new production facility in Peterlee opened earlier this year. VBites and East Durham College worked in partnership to recruit and train their apprentices.
Heather said: “We’re really pleased to be working with East Durham College. They’ve helped us a lot with finding apprentices and it’s really important that more training happens, and you get assistance.
“We’re a family business just starting up and all the costs and everything are dependant on us so it’s good that we get this assistance to work out who’s going to be a good worker and who’s not. We’ve spent loads of money on agencies and they haven’t turned out very good, but these apprentices are turning out great and East Durham College is doing a good job training them up.”
Emma Norbury, Business Development Advisor at East Durham College, said: “VBites is set to bring a great amount of job opportunities to the North East, and at EDC we are thrilled to be supporting them with this.
“It’s great to see a company investing in the future, and our three apprentices are already hitting the ground running and doing some fantastic work at VBites.”
Alongside their work at VBites, the three apprentices work with East Durham College to complete their apprenticeship.
