Llyr Gruffydd MS Member of the Senedd for North Wales

Picture caption: From left: Director Mulkh Mehta, Llyr Gruffydd MS, Site Director Ricky Mehta and Director, Cassidy and Ashton, Guy Evans.

Plaid Cymru's North Wales MS Llyr Gruffydd has visited one of Wales's largest poultry processing plants.

Maelor Foods near Wrexham employs 250 workers, and now processes a million chickens a week at the plant.

Llyr Gruffydd MS, who represents the region, met with directors before taking a tour of the site.

He said: "Maelor Foods, a family-owned firm has expanded rapidly at its Wrexham site since 2017 and now employs 250 staff.

"The scale of the operation is quite phenomenal and the company is clearly ambitious to do more. We had some frank discussions about the impact of that in terms of jobs but also the local amenity and expanded number of lorry movements. The company has ambitions to grow further in the wake of an increased demand from their customers to source chicken from the UK."

He said the company's previous £20 million investment on the former creamery site had enabled it to take birds from 40 different farms in the locality as well as work with Lloyd's Animal Feeds in Wrexham.

Ricky Mehta, Site Director at Maelor Foods said “We were delighted to welcome Llyr to Maelor Foods and to show him our state-of-the-art facility. We continue to look for ways to invest in and improve our business, whilst putting measures in place to mitigate any potential impact. We will continue to work with our suppliers to ensure the economic benefits for the region are realised.”