Maelor Foods is celebrating the easing of a planning restriction that has capped its production capacity. The approval ultimately enables the poultry processing site to process two million birds per week, twice that of today, although the business plans a modest increase of 25% over the next 18 months.
The planning restriction, imposed by Wrexham Council, is unique among UK poultry facilities in that it directly limited the number of units processed each week. Its removal follows more than two years of determined work by Maelor Foods, supported by expert consultants. In June 2024, a key breakthrough came when Natural Resources Wales issued a permit confirming that with Maelor’s planned environmental investment and control measures, the plant could operate at twice its current capacity with a reduced environmental impact when compared with that of today.
“This is a hugely important moment for our business,” said Ricky Mehta, site director for Maelor Foods. “We’ve invested significantly in our people, our infrastructure, and our processes to ensure that we are not only meeting demand, but leading the industry in responsible, sustainable poultry production.”
Despite the lifted restriction, challenges remain. A shortage of poultry farming space in the UK is limiting overall production potential — a challenge the industry continues to raise with planning authorities.
The Wrexham-based facility, which first began production in 2017, has seen rapid growth. Supported by a Welsh Government Grant the owners transformed what was an idle factory on the edge of the Wrexham Industrial Estate into a state-of-the-art processing plant. By 2020, it had doubled throughput from 400,000 to 800,000 birds per week, eventually reaching its planning-imposed ceiling of 1 million birds per week early in 2021. Since then, demand from retail, food service, and manufacturing customers has consistently outstripped available capacity.