One of the leading family owned confectionery manufacturers in Britain today, Brays Sweets began manufacturing their quality handmade confectionery in 1867 in Barry, a small town on the coast of South Wales. The company in its present form was started by Vivian Bray who incorporated it into a limited company in 1952.

The present Managing Director, Stephen Bray, can trace the art of sweet making back to his great, great, grandfather. It is told that he sold a recipe for toffee to a man called Macintosh...

In 1967 Brays acquired the rights to one of Wales' finest peppermints Lossin Dant Welsh Mints, and in 1978 expanded again with the purchase of Franks Special Mints, another family run confectionery company.

In 1986 Conway Confectioners, a small confectionery company in Swansea, went into receivership. They were famous for their range of unwrapped boiled Sweets, especially Conway Olde Fashion Mixtures, a mix of 18 variously shaped and flavoured sweets. The Conway sugar boiler was David Ridgeway, and he agreed to start work at the Brays factory in Barry to continue the Conway label.

Meanwhile, in another branch of the family, Fred Bray, a cousin of Vivian's, had been making sweets in Merthyr, in a former Mill, since the 1930's. Unfortunately, in 1995, Fred had a small accident and decided to retire from the art of sugar boiling. Fred divulged the secret of his famous winter warmers, braymints and braymix to Brays who have continued to make Fred's sweets in this unique way, and still supply them in glass jars to the St Fagans Museum of Welsh Life on the outskirts of Cardiff.

Today, using only the finest ingredients, Brays' sweets are still made using recipes handed down from generation to generation, maintaining their home-made taste. Modern production equipment is used simply to meet demand.

Boiled Sweet Production at Brays

The ingredients for Brays sweets are hand weighed and stirred with long spatulas into shiny copper pans and heated over traditional open gas/air forced draught fires.

Once the sugar/glucose mixture has reached hard crack it is removed from the fire and carefully tipped onto a water cooled cast iron cooling table. The molten mass spreads and fills the table with a layer of sweet product.

The mixture is left for a few minutes to cool before it is turned in with a pair of scissors and a palette knife. The Sugar Boiler then adds the flavourings plus any dextrose or food acid powders. These are kneaded into the mass until dissolved.

The batch is then cut into three pieces: a small part which will later form the white strip; a larger part which will form the centre of the sweet; and a third part, usually the biggest, which will form the outer casing of the sweet.

The small part is then taken to a pulling machine. This machine has rotating arms which pull and aerate the sugar mixture which then changes colour, as if by magic, to a white creamy mass. A similar colour difference is seen between the head on a pint of beer and the liquid underneath.

This 'white' part is then further kneaded until soft and light. It is then added to the outer casing in the form of stripes. The number of stripes depends on the product, but it is generally between four and twelve. The art is to ensure that each stripe is uniform and identical to the others.

The striped outer casing is flipped over. The centre is then rolled into a cylinder and placed on top of the casing. The casing is then folded around the centre. This forms a giant sweet! This monster sweet, which can weigh almost 100 pounds (45kg) is carried by two people and placed into the batch roller which is then heated. The batch roller consists of four rotating conical rollers which taper the giant sweet into a manageable 'rope'.

The giant sweet is fed into the forming dye which stamps out each individual shape. At this stage the sweets are still warm and are joined together at the corners. They follow each other 'nose to tail' along the conveyor belt, onto which is blown cold air. They end up on a round carousel, cooling and awaiting the next stage.

They are then sieved to eliminate any sharp edges and transferred to a wrapping machine. The sweets may be wrapped in cellophane, wax or more recently PVC. However, the style is always the familiar fan tail twist.

Brays Sweets - The Welsh Sweet Company

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