LOSELEY Dairy Ice Cream is about to open a factory shop at its Llantarnam Park site. It's the latest addition to the state-of-the-art facility where all the UK's Thayer, Loseley and Yorkshire Dales ice cream is produced.

The factory opened in March 2004. Owner Tim Wilson spent the previous 12 months fitting-out the facility to his specifications.

It's a labour of love for the Skipton man whose grandmother made and sold her own ice cream in the Yorkshire town in the 1930s.

"I'm passionate about what I do and enjoy the business tremendously," he said. "What we're doing here is combining the best of traditional ingredients with the most modern production methods. Eventually we'd like to be seen as a centre of manufacturing excellence."

Unlike many self-made men, Mr Wilson is also passionate about management science and has an MSc in the subject from the University of Manchester.

It may help him to get along with his marketing manager, his daughter Alice.

A serial entrepreneur (before ice cream he was in biscuits), Mr Wilson founded the Yorkshire Dales ice cream brand in Skipton in 1980. At the same time, the Loseley brand was being founded in Guildford, Surrey.

Mr Wilson said: "These two brands became the most successful in the UK although we didn't sell south of Birmingham and Loseley's didn't sell north of London."

In the late 1990s Loseley was acquired by the Cardiff-based Thayer brand led by Robert Hodge.

In 2003, the three brands came together with Mr Wilson running the consolidated business. Mr Hodge remains involved as a shareholder.

"The plan now is to elevate one of our regional brands to nationwide coverage. We're not sure which one has the best prospects but we've done market research and we're awaiting the results."

It's important that the company gets it right as national competition can be fierce.

"We're competing for supermarket space with the American brands such as Ben & Gerry's and with the supermarket's own brands. But the size and modernity of this Llantarnam plant means we can offer premium quality without premium pricing.

"Ultimately, if the offering is right, the public will choose."

The latest weapon is a one-litre sized family offering to be stocked in all the major supermarkets. "It's good value for money."

There is also a major campaign to sell more ice cream to small shops and mobile traders through the company's own sales reps. "We're mounting a serious push in Wales under the 'Made in Wales' slogan. After all, we're the only independent manufacturer here making a full range of products."

The consolidation at Llantarnam came about through a flood at the Yorkshire Dales factory in 2000 and the fact that the Thayer plant in Cardiff needed extensive modernisation.

"We had a lot of help from the Assembly and WDA to help us to move here and the site we've created gives us a fantastic platform with plenty of room to expand."

The Cwmbran site gets through a weekly shopping list of 30 to 40 tonnes of milk, ten tonnes of butter up to six tonnes of cream. These raw materials are blended to produce a wide range of products from two-litre tubs to finger-like chocolate milks on a stick.

It also plays host to hordes of schoolchildren at its visitor centre which features glassed-in aerial walkways with views on to the production line, mixing room and cold storage facility where 600 pallets of ice cream are kept at -35 degrees.

Staff recruitment has been straightforward. Operations director Simon Lewis said: "Factory closures in the area such as LG Electronics have been bad news for some but they've created a pool of labour and we've been able to draw from that."