A FERMANAGH cracker and sweets company is in the final stage of talks to supply two major supermarket chains, in a move that could see over a dozen new jobs coming to a local village.
Over the past few years JFC Distribution has been growing from strength to strength, and the company currently employs scores of local people at its base in the Roslea Enterprise Centre. Packaging and distributing over five million bags of sweets each year, JFC’s latest venture, the phenomenally popular healthy snacks All Natural Slims, has seen the company’s demand surge and now expansion plans are underway.
“We’re in talks with two big supermarkets,” said James Connolly, who set up the company in his garage just under a decade ago and has grown it every year since.
The company could now expand even further, and James said they had plans “ready to go” to expand the Roslea factory if and when the need arises.
“The plans are done, but they haven’t gone into planning yet,” he said. “At the minute we have enough capacity, but we’re just making a Plan B. We need to have a plan. If we were to get twice as big we’d need to move to a new building.”
James explained that the factory’s capacity was currently adequate to fulfil the first of the potential contracts with one of the big chains, however if the talks with the second are successful the factory’s expansion would begin immediately.
“We’ve the plans and all done for it, we’re just waiting to see if we can get a contract signed up,” he said. “The moment the contract is signed we’ll go ahead through planning.”
Even more encouraging is the fact that James added that if both the company is successful in securing both contracts, JFC would seek to hire 14 more employees, which would be a significant boost to Roslea and the surrounding areas.
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