A SCHOOLGIRL has been given a sweet treat after winning a golden ticket all of her own.

Sasha Jeffery, 10, from Cumnor, won a national competition to become an apprentice at German sweet company Haribo.

As a Haribo Little Apprentice, Sasha became one of 10 children who worked together tasting new treats and coming up with their own ideas.

She said: “I was really excited. We were allowed to go around and pick sweets off the line.

They showed us around the factory and let us eat the Haribos which had gone wrong. Our parents weren’t allowed in because it is really secret.

“The factory was huge. There were so many floors.

“As soon as you walked outside you could smell the Haribo.

“They had all these tubes coming through the ceiling which had sweets in them.

“It was a bit like Willy Wonka. Even the offices have0 sweets in them.

“I really want to work there when I am older.”

As well as touring the factory, Sasha was allowed to taste some of Haribo’s new sweets.

She said: “Some of them were disgusting but some were really nice.

“My sweet idea was rainbow sweets in strips which had a flavour in each one.”

To win the prize the Cumnor Primary School pupil had to tell the Haribo team how she would run their sweet factory in Pontefract for a day.

Sasha’s father David Jeffery said: “She had to do a drawing and she made a little cartoon series. The next thing we knew she got a phone call from Haribo saying she had won.”

When her day trip came to an end Sasha was given the opportunity to fill a small drum with her favourite Haribo sweets to take home with her.

She will also be receiving sweets each month until next year.

Mr Jeffery said: “She always asks us if she can have any sweets so I am not worried about her health.”

Louise Morrison, Haribo’s brand communication manager, said: “It is every child’s dream to run a sweet factory and just once a year we make sure a small group of children experience this once in a lifetime opportunity.

“The kids absolutely loved it.

“Some of the ideas we received really gave us an insight into the creativity and imaginations of the children with some fantastic suggestions about how they would run the factory for a day.

“Sasha certainly rose to the challenge.”