Glowing tributes have been paid to a family of Cumbrian entrepreneurs who lost their lives in an African plane crash.

Alan Williams, 59, a man described as the "Richard Branson of Furness", was on a safari holiday with his entrepreneurial wife Sue and her sister Jill when their five-seater Cessna plane came down in a remote area of western Tanzania.

They are all missing presumed dead along with their colleague and close friend Deborah Winn and the plane's Canadian pilot.

Together the Williams family founded Colony Candles 25 years ago in their Backbarrow garage, building it into Britain's leading scented candle manufacturer with a £20 million turnover and a visitor centre at their Lindal-in-Furness factory.

On Sunday afternoon, the group took off from the eastern shores of Lake Tanganikya for the Katavi National Park when contact with their plane was lost soon after take off.

After failing to arrive at their destination, which is famed for its forest and chimpanzees, four search planes were dispatched. They eventually found plane wreckage along with two bodies at a remote site near the mountainous Mahale National Park.

Tanzanian police are now helping in efforts to retrieve all the remains.

A Foreign Office spokesman said the Tanzanian Civil Aviation Authority was also on its way to the area to investigate the cause of the crash.

As news broke of the disastrous crash, tributes flowed freely for the Williams family and Ms Winn.

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