A food firm has created 50 jobs and is forging ahead with the building of a new super bakery since being rocked by a devastating fire exactly a year ago.
The blaze on August 19 last year destroyed the Village Bakery’s flagship bakery on Wrexham Industrial Estate, but it far from floored the company.
It says it is now “stronger than ever”, with ambitious plans for future growth.
The new 140,000 sq ft bakery in Ash Road is more than three times the size of the one it’s replacing and the shell of the building is now complete.
The company will be kitting it out with the very latest equipment and say it will be the most modern bakery in Europe when it’s up and running next year.
It will also include a new baking academy to train the next generation of bakers and a cutting-edge new product development kitchen, twice the size of the original one, to ensure the Village Bakery stays ahead of the competition.
The buoyant mood now is in stark contrast to when the fire broke out at 8.41am on a day which managing director Robin Jones described as the “blackest” in the company’s history.
Thankfully, nobody was hurt and Robin, his brother Christien, the Projects Director, and their father, Alan, the company Chairman, immediately vowed the company would bounce back to become even bigger and better in future.
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The affected workers were redeployed to the Village Bakery’s other three bakeries where production was stepped up to maintain supplies to their customers.
Another 30 of the staff displaced by the fire are now making a new range of American-style bagels, using a specialist production line imported from Canada.
Orders for other products also rolled in because their wholesale customers were so impressed by the positive way they have responded to the setback.
Robin said: “Thank God no one was hurt, that was the most important thing of all.
“Everybody followed our well-drilled evacuation procedures and got out safely. My daughter was working in the bakery, so it was a worrying time for all of us.
“The fire service responded quickly and were fantastic but after two hours we knew we had lost the bakery because the flames were so fierce.
“By lunchtime, our focus had switched to recovery mode and how we could rearrange production by using every square inch of our other bakeries to maintain supplies to our customers.”
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He added: “A few days after the fire I finally had the opportunity to see the torrent of touching good will messages on social media from the people who buy and consume our products. It was truly humbling to see how highly they regard us.”
Robin added: “It’s absolutely remarkable how we’ve got back on track, how we’ve rebuilt our production capabilities, how the staff have reacted and also how we’ve come through Covid as well.
“Since the fire we have created 50 new jobs and the new bakery is the embodiment of our faith in the future.”