{"id":539201,"date":"2025-10-31T05:54:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T05:54:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/539201\/"},"modified":"2025-10-31T05:54:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T05:54:12","slug":"radnor-hills-one-of-our-greatest-success-stories-in-wales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/539201\/","title":{"rendered":"Radnor Hills ‘one of our greatest success stories in Wales’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n Radnor Hills<\/a> was founded by William Watkins<\/a> on his family\u2019s Heartsease farm<\/a>, just outside Knighton<\/a>, in 1990, after his father discovered a new water source, from which he planned to water his cattle.\n<\/p>\n

\n Now, 35 years later, the Radnor brand has become a giant of the food and drink industry and is recognised globally \u2013 being sold in supermarkets, restaurants and even on aeroplanes.\n<\/p>\n

\n Mr Irranca-Davies visited the firm\u2019s headquarters on Thursday (October 30) to officially unveil its new \u00a35 million Tetra Pak line, which will increase its overall carton capacity by 150 per cent to 150 million packs annually, and which will also lead to more than 20 new jobs being created.\n<\/p>\n

\n Mr Irranca-Davies unveils a plaque officially opening the Tetra line three. (Image: Matt Jones)\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cI look out at the landscape, with the Welsh blacks and sheep grazing on beautiful pasture land, as well as the woodland and water seeping down through these hills, this setting in is in the rural heartland of Wales,\u201d said Mr Irranca-Davies, the cabinet secretary for climate change and rural affairs.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cThe expansion of Radnor Hills and opportunities provided for 260 people, to do that here is quite frankly one of our greatest success stories in Wales.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cRadnor Hills is really at the forefront of our food and drink industry, which is going great guns, both domestically and in terms of international exports too.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cThanks to William and all the generations of the Watkins family who came before, but also the team you\u2019ve assembled here behind you \u2013 which includes a robotics firm in Newtown.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cIt\u2019s a real team effort and an enormous success, that\u2019s why I\u2019ve come here. It\u2019s not because I like to see my name on plaques \u2013 even though I do. It\u2019s such a success story, in an important part of the country for us.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cIt’s great to be here today, celebrating success, vision, ambition for food and drink in Wales and building on the success that\u2019s come before.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n William Watkins, the CEO of Radnor Hills, launched the company in 1990. (Image: None)\n<\/p>\n

\n Mr Watkins described it as \u201cabsolutely fantastic\u201d to receive such praise from Mr Irranca-Davies, and to have him visit the site.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cSometimes, in Mid Wales, we feel unrecognised, with the small population, but we\u2019ve got a lot, a surprising amount of innovative companies, and I\u2019d like to think we\u2019re one of them,\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cSo, getting some recognition for that by getting the deputy first minister here is great.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n The new line means at least 20 new jobs will be created by Radnor Hills across its Knighton and Presteigne sites, with an additional 12 people already employed at its Penycae site in the south of Powys.\n<\/p>\n

\n It means that the number of employees will soon push beyond 270 \u2013 and William sees no reason why that number won\u2019t rise above 300 in the future.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cThe 20 new jobs will be coming in the future, as we develop that business, and we have absolutely no doubt that that line will be completely full in another few years and we\u2019ll be thinking about hopefully another one,\u201d he added.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cI think we will top 300 in a few years.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n Radnor Hills has become a globally-recognised business.\n<\/p>\n

\n William touched on a \u201cgreat relationship\u201d Radnor Hills enjoys with Newtown-based RM Group, which provides automated packaging systems.\n<\/p>\n

\n He added: \u201cI found out about them at an international trade show on the continent. I had no idea about them, I just saw this incredible machinery working, and when I spoke to the rep, who said they were based in Newtown, I had to do a double take.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cWe have to make sure we\u2019re using the most automated and best techniques. Whenever we do this, we also grow.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cAutomation for us doesn\u2019t mean less employees. It means doing things more efficiently, growing our marketplace.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cBecause we\u2019re doing that, we may have to repurpose what people\u2019s jobs are, move them from here to there, but we tend to still go up in workforce.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cIt\u2019s important we do things efficiently and if we do that we\u2019ll get more market share and we\u2019ll need more people because of that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Radnor Hills was founded by William Watkins on his family\u2019s Heartsease farm, just outside Knighton, in 1990, after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":539202,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5010],"tags":[748,4884,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-539201","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wales","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115467233722432609","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=539201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539201\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/539202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}