Wales’s best hotelier supports supply chain skills campaign

Just a year after being bought out of administration, and having been selected by the AA as Hotel of the Year 2013-2014 for Wales, Llangoed Hall is making headlines again.

The hotel in Brecon is managed by Calum Milne, who has been central to the hotel’s revived fortunes. He has now become the first hotelier to endorse a new campaign seeking to up-skill existing workers and attract new ones into the food and drink industry in Wales.

The campaign, called “Future Skills… food for thought” aims to attract 75,000 new recruits into the industry over the next decade. The campaign is one of the first developments to come out of a food and drink skills summit held earlier this month which was attended by over 100 representatives from across the industry, from farmers unions through to food manufacturers, earlier this month.

Calum said: “We have a massive skills shortage in Wales – in fact we’re playing catch-up with the rest of the UK.  Unless we invest time in training staff, we can’t grow as a business.”

Over the coming months the campaign will be looking for new recruits to fill gaps identified across the entire food and drink supply chain, from agriculture through to manufacturing, retail and hospitality.