Helen Thomas – Westons Cider

Getting the opportunity to travel with work is always great, especially when you get to photograph nice people and interesting places. On this assignment I was heading out to Much Marcle in Herefordshire with the Features Editor of Generation magazine, the UK’s leading magazine for family businesses, and fellow Photographer Jeremy Baile of RGB Digital to interview and photograph Helen Thomas, Managing Director of Westons Cider at their UK Headquarters.

On arriving on-site we were given a tour of the plant by Helen’s son, Guy, which gave us an opportunity to marvel at the vast operation that Westons is, as well as letting us scout locations for the days shoots. After an hour we had found 5 locations that we thought would work well for the various spreads and the cover shot. Helen was a pleasure to work with – happily posing for all of the shots we required, including one outside next to their giant stainless steel cider storage silos … at -3 degrees!

Since Helen took over as M.D of Westons, she has introduced many new technologies and processes to the company to keep them at the top of the pile, giving them the facilities to produce and sell in excess of 46 million pints of cider a year. Along with the new, there is of course the old. Still in use at the plant today are the wooden barrels that have been used throughout the history of the company, including the three original 30-foot-tall barrels used by Helen’s great-grandfather, Henry, when the company was formed.

Getting to sample a couple of varieties of their world famous cider over a spot of lunch at the on-site visitors centre was a great way to warm up before the final part of the day, a video interview between Helen and Amalia from Generation magazine for use in the near future online.

Keep your eyes peeled for the full interview and more images in the next edition of Generation magazine.