Four employees, almost no machinery.

Border Biscuits is a family-owned biscuit maker in Lanark, in South Lanarkshire. The company says it was founded in 1984 by John Cunningham, who bought “a tiny factory in Lanark” to make biscuits; Companies House records the incorporation of Border Biscuits Limited in March 1984. In 2013 its website described the start plainly: when Cunningham founded Border, it said, the business had “almost no machinery, a tiny factory, four employees and no money,” and relied on word of mouth to sell its biscuits. The same page said Cunningham “comes from a family of biscuit makers” and that the business was “still family owned.”

The company’s own timeline gives the next steps. Around 1989, it says, new recipes followed, including Dark Chocolate Gingers, Viennese Whirls and Chocolate Crumbles. In 1996 it moved to a larger factory in Lanarkshire, which it says “remains our biscuit-making home today,” and in 2013 it expanded that plant to produce 300,000 packets a week. Its website gives its address in Lanark, and its press releases have long described it as a “Lanark-based” manufacturer.

Border celebrated 40 years in business in 2024. That year, the company says, it won two awards at The Herald Scottish Family Business Awards: “Commitment to the Community” and “Family Business of the Year (Large).” It still describes itself as a family bakery and a family-owned business.

The Dark Chocolate Ginger.

Border’s best-known product is the Dark Chocolate Ginger. In January 2017 the company marked what it called the biscuit’s 30th anniversary with a “Ginger January” social-media campaign, which would date it to 1987; its current timeline groups it with recipes launched around 1989, so we give both. Lesley Ann Gray, then its brand and innovation director, said at the time that the Dark Chocolate Ginger was “the number one-selling biscuit in the sweet treats category in Scotland.”

In August 2015 the company said its Dark Chocolate Gingers had become the UK’s best-selling chocolate ginger biscuit, with more than 20 million made that year using 155 tonnes of chocolate; those are its own figures. Its current range is grouped into chocolate biscuits, “Originals,” biscuit bars, a sharing pack and mini packs; the Originals include Lemon Drizzle Melts, Fiery Ginger Crunch, Butterscotch Crunch and a Viennese Whirl. The company calls itself “Scotland’s number 1 premium biscuit brand” and says its mini packs make it the UK’s leading individually portioned biscuit brand “out of home” — both are its own claims.

The company also lists a run of awards. In June 2018 it said it had won “Business of the Year” and “Brand Success of the Year” at the Scotland Food & Drink Excellence Awards. Its Dark Chocolate Raspberry, launched in 2023, took silver in the cakes and biscuits category at The Grocer’s New Product & Packaging Awards that year, the company says, and a two-star Great Taste award in 2025.

Biscuits, wrappers and ownership.

The seven brands in this group all make biscuits, and they come from three parts of Britain: Border Biscuits, Paterson’s, Island Bakery and Crawford’s from Scotland, Duchy Originals and Fudges from England, and Burton’s from Britain more widely. Biscuit brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from everyday packets on a supermarket shelf to small-batch boxes sold through delicatessens, and a single company can work at both ends at once.

A biscuit brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single mark than by a recipe, a wrapper and the familiar shape of the biscuit inside, and the name on the front may have outlived the bakery, the family or the town that first made it. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, which larger groups it has passed through, and where its biscuits are actually baked today.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, its recipes and where its biscuits are made — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Biscuitiers, cardboard and a trust.

Border’s look has changed several times. By 2016 its website had introduced the Biscuitiers, a cast of characters presented as the people behind the biscuits — among them George, head of the tasting panel — and “Ginger George” fronted its 2017 advertising. In 2018 the company spoke of “our rebrand” and its “family of Biscuitiers.”

In July 2019 Border said it had removed 90% of the plastic from its packaging as part of a £1.6 million investment, moving its Ginger, Classic and Traditional retail packs to recyclable cardboard, halving their weight and fitting twice as many packs on a pallet; it put the saving at 537 tonnes of CO2e a year. At the same time, it said, it updated its logo, and it noted that shoppers could still see the biscuits inside the pack. In 2022 it refreshed “the look of our brand and packs” again, and it says its mini packs are now fully recyclable. We found no published brand guidelines and no official colour values.

Community giving is central to how the company presents itself. It says it gives 10% of its profits each year to a charity set up in 2007 as Border Biscuits Community Support and since renamed the Border Biscuits John Cunningham Trust, and a further 10% of annual profits to its permanent staff. The company says the charity passed £1 million in donations in February 2021 and £2 million by the end of 2025, and that in November 2025 the television presenter Lorraine Kelly opened the John Cunningham Creative Centre in Lanark, named after the founder and supported by the trust.

For a design guide, Border Biscuits shows how a family bakery can build an identity around one signature biscuit and a long-running packaging story. Compare Tunnock’s, another family-owned Lanarkshire baker, and Walker’s Shortbread, a family bakery in Speyside. For this guide we use a dark chocolate brown, a ginger amber and a shortbread cream with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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