350 jobs set for Cwmbran as superstore opens

6:30pm Tuesday 8th January 2013 in News

A NEW supermarket, creating 350 new jobs will be opening in Cwmbran later this month.

The finishing touches are now being applied to the store on the northern end of the Meritor site in Grange Road for supermarket chain Morrisons to open for business on Monday, January 21.

As well as the 37,000 sq ft store, there is also a petrol station, which is already open, and there will be a café and a 497-space car park.

Around 150 full-time positions have been created and 200 part time jobs. Morrisons will be joining Asda, Sainsburys, Lidl and Aldi in the town.

Future plans for the site also includes a hotel, pub and offices.

More than 100 jobs are expected to be created over the next five years as part of a £36 million investment into the brake business at Meritor’s Cwmbran plant.

The regeneration project began in 2010, due for completion in 2014 and is supported by the Welsh Government through the Single Investment Fund.

Plans for the supermarket were approved unanimously by Torfaen council back in 2011 at an extraordinary council meeting.

Councillors were supportive of the plans, which also included outline planning permission for a 60- bedroom hotel with the option of a pub or restaurant, and two office blocks, creating around 270 jobs.

A £7.5 million bond was paid to the council to cover the remediation work for the area and the Arvin Meritor, now called Meritor, site.

Approval was also given for Meritor, to refurbish, partly demolish and extend the existing part of its factory.

The Cwmbran facility, which employs 450 people, serves the commercial and industrial vehicle market and exports 90 per cent of its products.

The investment involves reconfiguring the site, and totally refurbishing its production facility to be concentrated at the southern end of the plant, enabling land that is surplus to requirement to be released for further development in Cwmbran.

In September last year Meritor Inc announced an incremental investment of £10m in its Cwmbran site which builds on the £26m investment the company announced in 2010.

Comments(14)

tHatDude says...
6:59pm Tue 8 Jan 13

More part time jobs than full time. Google underemployment. Costs them less to hire people part time.

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koifisher says...
8:02pm Tue 8 Jan 13

True there thatdude, and if they have been taken off the dole , I believe the government pays for retrain costs , so free labour , till the store settles down and trading evens out as a new store is always busy when it first opens ,, then most probably will say goodbye to quite a few workers , wasn't Tesco's the same in risca , hundreds of new jobs , then after a few weeks , lots were laid off over a period of time , but I might be wrong !! Would be nice to know ,

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Mr Holder says...
11:08pm Tue 8 Jan 13

Great, just want we need, more jobs subsidised via tax credits. Trebles all round.

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Mr Holder says...
11:09pm Tue 8 Jan 13

Mr Holder wrote:
Great, just want we need, more jobs subsidised via tax credits. Trebles all round.
what ;)

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portman says...
12:01am Wed 9 Jan 13

Morrisons need to come into the 21st century and stop trying to be a poor man's Waitrose.

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maryjj says...
9:02am Wed 9 Jan 13

Most of the people taking the part time, underpaid jobs will be women. These women more often than not have children in school or are older and do not wish to work full time. The part time hours offers them the chance to work, take less money from the welfare system and look after their children which will hopefully be better for society as a parent is there for them when they come home from school.
Surely, this is a win win situation for all.

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sperduti says...
11:09am Wed 9 Jan 13

well done to cwmbran on its success of a lovely town with plenty of shops free parking!!!!!! come on newport CITY wake up will you !!!!!!!!!!!

i shop in cwmbran and cardiff as newport is like a ghost town i only visit my bank and thats it!!!

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Cwmderi says...
12:00pm Wed 9 Jan 13

So that looks like the final nail in the coffin of the Labour councillors top prority to have brought a new Morrisons store to Blackwood by Christmas (gone).
Surely they would have known that their Labour colleagues in Torfaen had lined up this store back in 2011 and that Morisons had already committed to building a new store in Bargoed.
So it now appears that they have told the residents of Blackwood and the surrounding areas half a story prior to their elections and led them up the garden path with their claims that Morrisons had put in a planning application to build a new store at Blackwood, which now turns out to be totally false.
WHY SHOULD WE BE SURPRISED?

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Dolieboy says...
12:40pm Wed 9 Jan 13

koifisher wrote:
True there thatdude, and if they have been taken off the dole , I believe the government pays for retrain costs , so free labour , till the store settles down and trading evens out as a new store is always busy when it first opens ,, then most probably will say goodbye to quite a few workers , wasn't Tesco's the same in risca , hundreds of new jobs , then after a few weeks , lots were laid off over a period of time , but I might be wrong !! Would be nice to know ,
Actually many of them, including managers were sacked for stealing.

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Mr Bump. says...
2:06pm Wed 9 Jan 13

sperduti wrote:
well done to cwmbran on its success of a lovely town with plenty of shops free parking!!!!!! come on newport CITY wake up will you !!!!!!!!!!!

i shop in cwmbran and cardiff as newport is like a ghost town i only visit my bank and thats it!!!
We've already got two Morrisons in Newport. As well as two huge tescos a huge sainsburys, two asda, 2 aldi 2 lidl, plus at least 5 convienience tesco as well as many others. so that's a daft post.

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koifisher says...
7:26pm Wed 9 Jan 13

Actually many of them, including managers were sacked for stealing.!!
If that's the case and they were all replaced by more staff , I was wrong dolieboy,, my apologies ,, if they didn't . Then to me, as you said many of them , what about the people that were laid off that wasn't stealing,

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tHatDude says...
10:16pm Wed 9 Jan 13

Yes Risca Tesco laid loads off. I met some on job centre training courses. Then before Christmas 2011 Risca Extra were looking for £0 per hour people through the job centre for "work experience". I know as job centre asked me if I wanted to volunteer.

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tHatDude says...
10:19pm Wed 9 Jan 13

And the stealing thing wouldn't surprise me. Pay people peanuts to do a job, and be surrounded by mechandise, in some cases worth £1000 per item, and it's inevitable really.

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Cwmderi says...
1:02pm Fri 11 Jan 13

tHatDude wrote:
And the stealing thing wouldn't surprise me. Pay people peanuts to do a job, and be surrounded by mechandise, in some cases worth £1000 per item, and it's inevitable really.
Dude
Sorry mate but your assumption that it it is inevitable that people on low pay will steal does not stand up to scruiny.

However, it could be levelled at some of the richest people in the country like bankers and many other extremely well off people who have ripped off millions of customers by their greed.

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