Nigella Lawson endorses Shropshire-made pots and pans she used for latest recipes

Netherton Foundry, based at Highley near Bridgnorth, has provided the glamorous celebrity chef with pans as she prepares her latest set of recipes, leading her to praise the brand on social networks.

Just as Delia Smith's recipes have sparked a rush to get hold of ingredients wine from supermarket shelves, now Nigella's endorsement for the Shropshire-made pots and pans could lead to a business boom for the county manufacturer.

She posted her delight at Netherton's products on Twitter and Instagram, in the process advertising the goods to more than two million of her fans.

It continues the company's association with Nigella – who is known for her indulgent recipes – after it enjoyed a boom in sales around the world thanks to her endorsement of its slow cooker.

"We've had a bit of a relationship with Nigella for about a year or so now," said Netherton director Neil Currie.

"Now she is developing a whole new range of recipes and wanted our pans to try them in.

"It's amazing how knowledgeable and down to earth she is, she's a great cook and is really interested in the products she uses."

He added: "We know that when Nigella mentions she is a regular user of our slow cooker it increases sales, but not just in Britain.

"She was touring in New Zealand and Australia with our slow cooker, and that had an amazing effect on our sales – we have exported quite a few to Australia this year, even though it can be very expensive for them to transport them over there."

Nigella tweeted her 1.4 million Twitter followers a picture of her "beautiful" new pans, including a link to Netherton's own Twitter feed, and also sent it to her 766,000 followers on Instagram.

She is one of a number of well-known chefs to have used the company's products, although Mr Currie said they were not all so keen to to lend their powerful endorsement to the company's marketing.

"We can count probably about half a dozen Michelin-starred chefs using out products but we have to be quiet about them," he added.

"What Nigella is doing now is quite secret and hush-hush, as it will probably end up in a new book or maybe even on the television, but she is just starting off with recipe ideas at the moment. She was quite specific about the sizes of pans that she wanted to no doubt we'll hear about what she's doing in the next few months."

Netherton employs six people at its site near Bridgnorth, but also says that 85 per cent of the items it uses in assembling its products are sourced from either within Shropshire or from neighbouring counties.

As well as Australia and New Zealand, its exports travel to Japan, China, the USA, Holland and Germany.

Netherton's foundry makes the tooling to manufacture the products, and assembles the finished goods, which also include tagines, kettles and iron cookbook stands.