Harlech lands more than £2m in school food contracts

Harlech Foodservice has clinched two major schools contracts worth more than £2m – including its first education deal in south Wales.

One of the deals, worth £1.5m, is to provide schools in Gwynedd, north Wales, with a range of products including Welsh beef. The other is a £700,000, 12-month agreement to supply schools and care homes in Rhondda Cynon Taf, south Wales.

The Gwynedd contract covers all the schools in Gwynedd, including Ysgol Llanystumdwy, near Harlech’s headquarters in Criccieth.

The school’s head cook Alison Green said: “It’s great that we’ve got a local company supplying us from literally just up the road so the deliveries are great.”

Councillor Menna Trenholme, head of procurement for Gwynedd Council, said: “It’s very important to us as a council and to the parents to have a local firm supplying our schools with local produce wherever possible and it’s very important for the local economy as well.”

Harlech account manager for Gwynedd, Ursula Scurrah-Price, added: “It’s great that the closest school to our headquarters is supplied by us.

“As a north Wales firm it’s very important to us that the quality and nutritious value of the meals in schools is as high as possible and that only the best quality is used and we work closely with Gwynedd and other councils to ensure that is the case.”

The wholesaler now has contracts with all six north Wales councils to supply schools.

Harlech, which also has a base in Chester, recently added new depots in Merthyr Tydfil, Carmarthen and Telford, and took over rival Celtic Foodservices in Pembroke Dock in Pembrokeshire.

The move is part of an overall £6m plan for the next three to five years to create 150 new jobs as part of a major expansion.

This was spurred by Harlech’s growth over the past three years which has seen sales increase from £32m to a record turnover of around £50m, with profit at an all-time high of more than £2m.

It has been a change in strategy which has seen Harlech win public sector contracts in health and education, in addition to its core customer base in tourism and hospitality.