Paris, Nov 01: One of France's top bakers, Lionel Poilane, was presumed dead today after the helicopter he was piloting crashed off his private island on the Brittany coast.
Divers who traced the wreckage in waters near the Port of Cancale said it contained a body, though they were unable to confirm if it was that of Poilane or of his artist wife, IBU, who was accompanying him. Earlier they found the body of the family dog.
The helicopter went down in thick fog last evening as it came in to land on the Ile Des Rimains, which lies less than a kilometre from the shore. The alert was given by a fisherman who said he heard the aircraft pass, then a loud noise.
Poilane, 57, headed the family bakery business from the 1970s, and converted it from a local supplier in Paris's chic saint-Germain quarter into a multi-million Euro concern, with customers across Europe, the US and the far east. From a circular factory in the southern outskirts of Paris containing 24 wood-burning ovens, Poilane today produces more than 15,000 loaves a day, which are supplied to shops and restaurants across the country -- generating a turnover of around 10 million Euros.

Bureau Report