Greggs is shutting four factories — in Enfield, Penrith, Kelso, and Seaham — and trimming operations at Treforest in Wales, a restructuring that could eliminate 740 jobs over the next two and a half years. The company frames this as necessary cost engineering: an upfront £60m hit (redundancy and disruption) to unlock £20m in annual savings by 2028. The market approved instantly. Shares jumped 7.3% on the announcement, the best performer on the FTSE 250 that morning, extending a 17% year-to-date rise. The closures are the flip side of Greggs' aggressive expansion. The chain opened 57 net new shops in its most recent period and plans 100–110 new locations by end of 2026. It has grown into Britain's largest fast-food business on the back of £1.35 sausage rolls and £2.25 lattes, selling volume at margins thin enough to demand relentless efficiency. Iced matcha lattes and expanded salad and chicken ranges helped drive 7.7% sales growth in the latest quarter, up from 7.2% in the first half. But the geography of these closures tells a different story than the headline growth numbers. Penrith, Kelso, Seaham, and Treforest are not labour markets where 740 manufacturing jobs are easily replaced. These are the kinds of regional economies that Greggs — a Newcastle-headquartered, proudly northern brand — has historically drawn on. The company says it will consult with trade unions and employee representatives, and distribution operations will continue at Enfield and Treforest. Cold comfort for production workers. The economic logic is straightforward: consolidate manufacturing into fewer, more efficient facilities and use the savings to fund retail expansion. This is the standard playbook for any consumer-facing chain scaling past a certain point. What makes it worth scrutiny is the asymmetry. Shareholders captured 7.3% in a single morning. Workers in four towns face two and a half years of uncertainty and an upfront £60m cost that exists primarily to serve the company's growth trajectory, not their livelihoods. Greggs flagged "greater inflationary pressures in 2027" as a concern, which means this restructuring is also a pre-emptive margin defence. Rising wages, energy costs, and packaging prices have already forced price increases — 5p on the sausage roll, 10p on the latte. Analyst Alex Pugh at Freetrade noted that a £1.50 sausage roll "could be a real test of loyalty." The company is betting that consolidation buys it enough headroom to keep prices low enough to hold its core customer base while inflation bites. With 33,000 employees across the UK, 740 jobs represent roughly 2.2% of the workforce — not existential for the company, but existential for the individuals and communities involved. The structure here is familiar: generative at scale (more shops, more jobs in retail), extractive at the point of impact (fewer jobs in manufacturing, concentrated in specific towns). The question is whether the new retail jobs created by 100+ annual openings absorb the displaced manufacturing workers, or whether those are fundamentally different labour pools in fundamentally different places.
