Food Processing Capacity

Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Rural Affairs and North Wales, and Trefnydd – in the Senedd at 3:14 pm on 30 November 2022.

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Photo of Andrew RT Davies Andrew RT Davies Conservative 3:14, 30 November 2022

Thank you, Minister. One thing that has always perplexed me is driving along the M4 and seeing tanker after tanker exporting milk out of the west Wales milk field. I appreciate it's not the Government's decision that that happens—it has been a commercial decision that dairies over many decades have taken—but, surely, through any processing capacity that the Welsh Government is looking at, it should be a priority to try to get more processing capacity into that substantial—it is substantial—milk field, one of the biggest in western Europe, so that value can be added to the product and, yes, then transported out of Wales to achieve the full value on the shelves of the UK and beyond. So, with the strategies that you've put in place, how confident are you that by the end of this Senedd term in 2026 we might see an increase in processing capacity in the west Wales milk field to add that value and keep that money here in Wales and at the farm gate?