That’s not including all the other sweets we produce, from toffee to fruit pastilles.
We usually only see all those confectionery delights lined up temptingly on the shelves.
But these photos give a rare insight into the processes involved in making those treats.
They take us inside some of the UK’s biggest and most historic sweet and chocolate factories, showing workers boiling, pouring and wrapping many of the world’s best-loved sugary snacks.
They take us back in time through nearly a century of confectionery wizardry, showing how technological advances have dramatically changed some techniques, while others remain much as they were a century ago.
The factories featured include Nestlé’s Halifax base, which can produce an astonishing 12 million Quality Street sweets in a single day; Cadbury’s Bournville factory in Birmingham, which makes 5.5 million blocks of Dairy Milk and more than a million Wispa bars each day; and the Rowntree factory in York, which churns out up to 4 million KitKat bars a day, along with Aeros, Yorkies and Polos.
The Haribo factory in Pontefract, and the Bassetts factory in Sheffield, now owned by Mondelēz, where Liquorice Allsorts, Jelly Babies and Trebor Mints are made, also feature in this mouthwatering retro photo gallery.
It’s not just the behemoths of the confectionery world pictured, though, with these nostalgic images also showing us the magic happening behind the scenes at some of the nation’s most historic independent factories.
They include Dixons, in Sheffield, which can trace its history back to 1885; Dobsons, in Elland, West Yorkshire, which has been making boiled sweets since 1850 and is best known for its Yorkshire Mixture; and Sheffield-based Simpkins, which was founded in 1921 and is famous for its travel sweets.
Between them, these factories employ thousands of people, but there’s one job everyone wants, and that’s to be the taste-tester.
Can you see your favourite chocolate bar or sweet being made in these photos, and do you know anyone who works or has worked in the factories featured?
If these pictures have got you feeling all nostalgic, you might enjoy this look back at the early 70s, and how we lived then.
9. Black Magic
Packing Black Magic chocolate gift boxes in 1956 | Heritage Images/Getty Images Photo: Borthwick Institute
10. In the factory
Jack Morrell and Liam Hatt on the production line at the Haribo sweet factory in Pontefract with packer Pat Banks in 2004 | Yorkshire Post Newspapers
11. Pouring out
A worker pours molten toffee onto an assembly line at the Sharp's Toffee factory, Maidstone, Kent, in June 1958 | Getty Images Photo: Evening Standard/Hulton Archive
12. Easter eggs
Easter egg plant operator, and Andy Furness, section manager of Easter eggs with some of the 18.5 million Easter eggs they were making in Easter 2022 | Halifax Courier