The West Midlands is to benefit from a new investment in the region’s food industry. If you are investment planning in Oswestry or wider Shropshire, Cumbrian firm Excelsior Foods has purchased the former Premier Foods site at Knighton on the English-Welsh border.
Upon completing the deal, Excelsior announced that recruitment would begin to fill around a hundred job positions. These include lab assistants, production supervisors and a range of IT and HR support personnel, all set to be hired as part of a multi-million pound investment in the operation over the next 24 months. The facility aims to focus primarily on their dietary and nutritional range of products.
Excelsior forms part of the larger Kendal Nutricare group. It said its aim is to restore the Knighton site to former glories. The company is a Queen’s Award for Enterprise winner and has in the past been named one of Europe’s 1000 fastest-growing companies in the baby milk formula manufacturing sector.
Excelsior took over the site after the previous owners announced they were phasing out manufacturing there in 2023. The company explained the move, pointing to local knowledge of the industry and commended the borough council for proactively supporting employment opportunities in the area.
For his part, Aidan Godfrey, the leader of Stafford Borough Council, said the move was ‘great news’ for the region and offered evidence of how the area is able to attract brands to the area and boost the growth of local small and medium enterprises.
