DescriptionPont Llanio milk factory is situated in the yard of Pont Llanio railway station (nprn 41351) on the Aberystwyth to Carmarthen railway line (nprn 91660). It was established by the Milk Marketing Board, opening in October 1937, originally as a collecting depot for transfer of liquid milk to rail tankers for onward transport to London. Butter manufacturing and dried milk production facilities were added shortly afterwards.
The main building, rectangular in plan with a narrow rectangular east wing, is entirely functional with no architectural embellishment; it is steel-framed with reinforced concrete walls, one and a half storeys high under an asbestos-clad twin pitched roof on the north and west and two storeys high under a flat roof on the south and east. A steel-framed, asbestos-clad tower rises from the roof on the north side and at the west end there is a full-width raised deck, for receiving milk lorries, covered by a substantial steel-framed awning.
The factory and its rail link closed in September 1970, milk intake and some of the staff being transferred to Felin Fach Creamery (nprn 91722). The building still stands, although derelict.
There are photographs of the building in a privately-owned album of photographs and documents in a scrapbook produced by P. F. Carter to provide a record of the development of the milk industry in West Wales 1928-1961. See People's Collection Wales www.peoplescollection.wales/items/491968 and 491971.
See also: Brian Malaws & Miriam McDonald `Bwrdd Marchnata Llaeth: Four Milk Marketing Board Creameries in Wales? Industrial Archaeology Review, 40:1 (2018), pp25-38.
B.A.Malaws, RCAHMW, 14 October 2008 & 07 December 2018.