New sports hub radiates hope for the future on historic site

IT WAS an all-too-familiar story after the Covid-19 pandemic... iconic manufacturing sites being downsized or even closed altogether as the world came to terms with facing the economic realities of the "new normal".

- Richard Clifford

One such site, nestled in a tiny corner of west Wales and just a decent touch-kick away from the home of a Welsh rugby legend (more of that later), boasts a history far more colourful than most.

In 1943, at the height of the Second World War, Morris Motors, the automotive company founded in 1912 in Oxford by William Morris - later to become Lord Nuffield - opened a plant in the village of Felinfoel.

The plant was to produce the revolutionary Gill Tube Radiators for arguably the most famous aeroplane in history - the Supermarine Spitfire.

Morris had decided to move production from Oxford to west Wales as there was significantly less of a risk there from the German Luftwaffe fleet who were bombarding Britain.

History will show the new generation of MkII Spitfires played a key role in turning the tide of the war in favour of the Allies.

Postwar, Llanelli Radiators continued on the site until 1989, when it was acquired by the Japanese Calsonic Corporation. In 2002 it became Calsonic Kansei, until 2019, when the Calsonic Corporation merged with Italian automotive giants Magneti Marelli.

Marelli still operates on the site today but following the pandemic a large section of former office buildings and the once-thriving social club became abandoned and fell into disrepair.

Fast-forward to December 2024 and after almost two years of negotiations, local businessman Neil O'Brien acquired a 7.5-acre section of the site with the vision of turning it into a community sports hub. So the seeds of the WINS Sports and Business Hub were sown.

"Having worked at the site myself for 20 years, it was the obvious place to look when I had the idea of creating a local community sports hub," says O'Brien, who was formerly a European vice-president of Calsonic Kansei with responsibility for the company's research and development in Europe and North America.