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A north Wales bakery group has reported record sales of almost £100m on the back of its growing export side of the business. The fast-growing Jones’ Village Bakery in Wrexham has seen its turnover increase by 30% in the current financial year following an increase in overseas sales.

Managing Director Robin Jones said: “We’ve grown from £69m to just shy of £100m this year and we are looking forward to continuing on that growth trajectory. It’s onward and upwards.”

Mr Jones put the success down to growing sales in mainland Europe and two recent contract wins launching in the next few months. He said the bakery is now getting enquiries from all over the world including as far as Australia Australia, Asia, and the United States.

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“One of our growth areas is the export market. We are going to hit our target of £5m million overseas sales by the year end in September and in the next financial year we’re going to double that,” he said. The bakery, which employs more than 800, is now looking to recruit 20 staff members to work on its £2m pancake production line which it opened in February this year.

It will enable the Wrexham-based family firm to ramp up production to 75 million pancakes a year to cater for the growing demand for them. The line is 20 metres long, three metres wide and is capable of making 34,000 pancakes an hour.

The firm, which operates six bakeries, has also installed state-of-the-art equipment at its 140,000 sq ft bakery on Wrexham Industrial Estate which opened in 2021.

“We had the foresight to invest in a fantastic set of bakeries with the best equipment on the market, we’ve automated to the hilt and our customers love that,” said Mr Jones.

“That means that, in the newer bakeries, we have taken out the heavy manual labour so that our staff can concentrate on high skill, high value tasks. All this means we've been well placed to cater for the increasing demand for our products.”

He added: “Our new pancake line which we installed in February is soon to go on double shifts, which will create a further 20 jobs. We also have space to add another 70,000 ft to the Ash Road bakery.”