23/08/2026
Not only one of the biggest manufacturers in Britain but also one of the most generous, whose Community support is outstanding.
Thankyou to the whole team 'over the road'
for their continued kindness and support over the years. You really are the cherry on the cake
🍰❤🍰❤🍰❤🍰❤🍰❤🍰❤
Cardiff did you know...? one of the biggest cake manufacturers in Britain is sitting right here in the city, producing around 41 million cakes every year!
Memory Lane Cakes, based on Maes-y-Coed Road in north Cardiff, is one of those enormous local businesses that thousands of people probably pass without ever realising quite what goes on behind its doors.
Cake has been produced at the site since 1958, meaning Cardiff has been home to large-scale cake manufacturing for almost 70 years. Today the site covers more than eight acres and contains five separate bakeries and nine main production lines, some operating around the clock.
And there is a very good chance you've eaten something made there without having the slightest idea it came from Cardiff.
Memory Lane is one of Britain's leading manufacturers of pre-packed cakes and is particularly important in producing supermarket own-label sharing cakes. In other words, many of those birthday cakes, chocolate cakes, Victoria sponges, traybakes, seasonal cakes and caterpillar-style party cakes sitting on supermarket shelves around the UK may have started life in Cardiff.
It also manufactures licensed cakes for some extremely recognisable names, including Thorntons, Disney and Mars. Over the years the factory has produced everything from premium supermarket ranges to branded celebration cakes and seasonal products.
At its present scale, the numbers are remarkable.
Around 41 million cakes are produced each year, with roughly 16,000 tonnes of product passing through the site annually. The company has described Memory Lane as Cardiff's second-largest private employer, with around 850 permanent staff on site, supplemented at busy times by agency workers.
And this isn't a small regional bakery supplying South Wales. Memory Lane Cakes Limited recorded turnover of almost £89 million in its latest filed financial year, with profits before tax of more than £6 million.
Its success in Cardiff is perhaps even more interesting when you consider how many national food manufacturers favour locations in the Midlands or other parts of central England for distribution.
One reason Memory Lane has remained here is that Cardiff hasn't actually been a bad location for it at all. The factory is only a short distance from Junction 32 of the M4, giving it direct motorway access towards Bristol, the Midlands, London and the rest of the supermarket distribution network.
But there is something else equally important: the infrastructure was already here. Rather than abandoning Cardiff and rebuilding somewhere supposedly more convenient, successive owners have continued investing in the existing factory, its workforce and its production lines. A major automated whole-cake production line was installed in 2017, while decades of specialist knowledge and manufacturing experience have accumulated around the site.
Memory Lane also became particularly important in the story of its parent company, Finsbury Food Group. It was Finsbury's first acquisition in 2002, and the group subsequently grew into one of Britain's major speciality bakery manufacturers.
So next time you're standing in a supermarket looking at rows of birthday cakes, chocolate sharing cakes, traybakes or children's character cakes, have a closer look.
That very ordinary-looking cake on a shelf might have been mixed, baked, decorated and packed right here in Cardiff.
For a city whose industrial history is normally associated with coal, docks and steel, Cardiff also happens to have quietly spent nearly seven decades helping to keep Britain supplied with cake.
And somehow, hardly anybody talks about it!
