Food manufacturing company 2 Sisters Food Group has revealed plans to cease operations at its Llangefni chicken factory, resulting in over 700 job losses.
The poultry giant said the site in Llangefni, Anglesey, was old and would require significant investment to bring it up to the same standard as its other locations, BBC reported on Thursday (26).
The firm also said Llangefni was one of its smallest sites and products could be made more efficiently elsewhere.
The company’s chief executive Ronald Kers said 2 Sisters would try to find alternative work for everyone. This would be with other local employers, or at its other sites including Sandycroft in Flintshire and Rogerstone, Newport.
However, he admitted redundancies were likely.
“We will do our best to redeploy as many people as possible, but I think it will be unrealistic to assume that we can redeploy everyone, so we will be looking at redundancies,” he said.
“We realise that this is absolutely terrible news for those families and we’ll do all that we can to listen to the ideas before we make any final decision.
“However, it is also our responsibility to the other 13,000 people that we employ to make sure that our business is sustainable as a total division,” BBC quoted Kers as saying.
Kers said a consultation with unions would explore the best way forward, but left little prospect of the factory staying open.
“I would never rule anything out, but the fact of the matter is that the site is old,” he added.
“So if there was an easy solution, we would have definitely explored that in more detail. Unfortunately, the picture is bleak.”
The planned closure follows a review by 2 Sisters of its UK poultry division to overcome “challenges facing the food manufacturing sector”.
Its review described the Llangefni site, which it bought in 2013, as “not sustainable” and lacking space to be efficient, despite £5m being invested there.
“The cost to produce here is higher, and it would require significant investment to bring it up to the standards of our other factories,” a statement said.
“Our products can be made more efficiently elsewhere across our estate.”
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