The Welsh Pantry

The Welsh Pantry is a privately-owned bakery business based in South Wales.

From our 100,000 sq. ft. state-of-the-art facility in Llantrisant we produce a Welsh-class range of branded and own-label savoury pastries: from delicious pies, sausage rolls, pasties, slices and quiches to ready meals.

We are a business built on hunger and are determined to keep on growing. Although we’ve increased turnover from £5m to over £20m in just five years, we are still only using just over 50% of our current site so have ample capacity to continue this impressive rate of growth and develop new and existing customer relationships throughout the UK and beyond.

A pantry
full of goodness

OUR PRODUCTS

Here are some of the milestones
in The Welsh Pantry journey

1988: The Welsh Pantry is established by David Ellis and Eric Parry. Based in a 2,000 sq. ft. unit on Treforest Industrial Estate, the business starts out supplying pies and pasties to South Wales convenience retailers.

1993: Eric Parry takes control and appoints Paul Anzani as a Director to assist with further developing the business, coinciding with a move to a 9,000 sq. ft. purpose-built bakery on the Riverside Industrial Park.

2003: After a decade of steady growth and gaining BRC accreditation, the business develops key accounts with Kwik-Save, Somerfield and the Welsh region of Tesco, whilst the van sales side of the business grows to 10 vans.

Here are some of the milestones
in The Welsh Pantry journey

2010: Bought by Bristol-based Indigo Food Group. New management and investment gives new impetus.

2011: Move to new 100,000 sq. ft. freehold factory in Llantrisant. New blood added to management team, complementing the skilled workforce already in place.

2013: Further £1m investment in machinery including a brand new flat-bed universal line.

2014: Another £1.3m invested, rewarded with multiple successful tenders for own-label business with major retailers.

2014: Recognition for environmental initiatives. A 250 KW solar PV is installed which generates a significant proportion of the electricity consumed at the site, dovetailing with an ongoing focus on minimising waste and the operation’s carbon footprint.

2014: Red Tractor status achieved.

2015: Level 5 Green Dragon Environmental Status achieved.

2015/2016: Further £2.5m invested in extending the bakery and the installation of a fully automated pie line. The Welsh Pantry is now well placed to grow annual turnover to £40m while achieving consistent product quality and world-class production efficiencies.

2015: Welsh Pantry win the SME Innovation Award at the Food Manufacture Excellence Awards.

2016: Named Environmental Business of the Year by Rhondda Cynon Taf.

2017: Extended and developed the range of quiche offering to now include luxury premium quiche and crust-less quiche.

OUR BAKERY

Over the years we have developed a highly efficient facility which delivers consistently high quality products at the most competitive prices in the UK.

Since moving to our current site in 2011, we have invested £7.5million in highly specified, cutting-edge bakery machinery in our quest for pasty perfection – every little detail counts in order to drive ever higher quality standards as well as optimising product consistency. Some highlights:

A+ BRC accreditation – we operate to the highest technical and food safety standards and are very proud to have achieved A+ in our most recent BRC audit. This is the highest grade achievable.

In-house NPD team and test kitchen – our team of Development Chefs enable us to deliver new product concepts within excellent timescales to meet retailer’s needs. To complement this skill set we’ve built a test kitchen to replicate many of our manufacturing processes, enabling us to optimise not only quality, but also waste reduction and process flows throughout the bakery.

All key machinery is modem-linked to our suppliers – should any breakdowns occur, this enables rapid support for our in-house engineering team and means that we recover very quickly from any setbacks.

Central monitoring system for temperature control – precise temperatures in bakery are essential to achieve consistency of product quality – from maintaining set temperatures for ingredient storage areas, to water chilling in each production section and blast cooling post bake - we have temperature control incredibly well managed. Furthermore, our central monitoring system alerts our Technical and Engineering teams immediately if there are any temperature deviations enabling us to react quickly in rectifying any issues.

Passionate and dedicated team – we’re fortunate to have an amazing team at The Welsh Pantry with some of our members having been with the business from the very start. We foster a supportive and entrepreneurial culture where everyone continually strives to identify and make improvements.