2 weeks Ago By Dylan Davies
A Gwynedd food distribution company has created over 70 new jobs and won over £1 million in contracts as a major expansion gathers pace. Harlech Foodservice, which has bases in Criccieth, Chester, Carmarthen, Merthyr Tydfil and Telford, has gained 943 new independent customers and won 243 new contract customers across Wales and the border counties of England since April. They range from individual shops and businesses to major local authority deals such as a contract to supply drinks and snacks to Shire Services, the catering and cleaning arm of Shropshire Council, while their move into South and West Wales has also borne fruit.
Harlech supply schools across Rhondda Cynon Taf and since that success have won contracts worth nearly £500,000 from their new depots in Carmarthen and Merthyr Tydfil. They have signed up Football League clubs Tranmere Rovers and Bristol Rovers, Everybody Health and Leisure Centres who run 17 centres for Cheshire East Council, and Hickory’s Smokehouses who have 25 restaurants as far afield as Leeds, Lincoln and Gloucester. The raft of new contracts have come after Harlech launched a £6 million expansion strategy and the company’s well ahead of schedule in meeting its target of creating 150 jobs over the next five years.
The plan was spurred by the company’s growth over the past three years which has seen sales increase from £32 million to a record turnover of around £50 million, with profit at an all-time high of more than £2 million. Harlech Sales Director, Mark Lawton, said: “These new contracts enable us to demonstrate the range of products we can supply and the excellent service we provide across a huge area of the country. “On the independent side we know what they want and we’ve been supplying them for over 50 years – we are a family-owned business ourselves.
We’ve got their back so we lock their prices in and we don’t sneak them up.” Earlier this year Harlech opened the new depot in Carmarthen and took over rivals Celtic Foodservice in Pembroke Dock in Pembrokeshire. Managing Director David Cattrall said: “We have actively gone about disrupting the way foodservice companies have traditionally operated.
“We have rejected the common practice of having inflated prices and increasing ‘negotiated’ prices without notice. “The acquisition of Celtic Foodservices is another new and important milestone our drive to provide a first class service to new and existing customers in every single corner of Wales.”.
