AN IRISH-based meat company which employs hundreds of people in the Aeron Valley may be sold to an overseas buyer, the Cambrian News has learned.

Dunbia Meats, the UK’s largest lamb processor, employs 615 people at their Llanybydder abattoir (pictured) and 176 at a smaller plant in Felinfach.

This is a sizable percentage of their total workforce of 4,000 scattered around the company’s 11 sites throughout the UK and Ireland.

But news that the County Tyrone-based beef, lamb and pork processors have been linked to a Brazilian food group has raised fears that an overseas sale would impact on local jobs.

“No-one here knows anything so all we can do is just wait and see what happens,” one man, who works at Llanybydder, told the Cambrian News.

“You don’t have to be a genius to figure out that if the company is bought by someone far away in Brazil it would probably do us no favours.

“At the moment it’s all whispers. This is a thriving operation which employs a heck of a lot of local people so let’s hope it stays that way.”

A Dunbia spokesman said there had been interest in the company from would-be investors but at the moment it was business as usual.

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