Chief executive of Cwmpas Bethan Webber says this year’s co-operatives fortnight is a moment to celebrate the businesses already showing what is possible
Chief executive of Cwmpas Bethan Webber
.People’s experience of the economy is complex and often disconnected from headline growth. Economies can expand while communities remain fragile. Investment may flow in, but little wealth stays local.
Jobs can be created without giving workers real security, a meaningful voice or a genuine stake in success.
That is why during this year’s co-operatives fortnight(which runs to July 3rd) , we are focusing on a different economic vision for Wales: one that has community wealth building at the heart.
It asks a simple but powerful question: how can we support all communities and places to create wealth, and ensure that more of it stays in that place, circulates through local communities, and benefits the people who live and work there?
It is not a slogan, and it is not a rejection of wider investment. Foreign direct investment will continue to matter and be a catalyst for growth. But if we want a more resilient, productive and inclusive economy, we also need to pay closer attention to local enterprise, democratic ownership and fair work.
In other words, community wealth building is about redesigning the architecture of the Welsh economy. Who owns businesses? Where do profits go? How are public contracts used? Are local firms supported to grow? Do workers share in success? Are communities simply consulted, or are they active participants?
These questions are at the heart of the co-operative movement but are relevant beyond it too.
They matter to entrepreneurs who want to build Welsh businesses across the board. They matter to public bodies who want more value from spending. They matter to investors who understand that resilient local economies are good places to do business. They matter to workers, families and communities who want growth to feel real in their everyday lives.
Wales is a small nation with strong communities, a proud tradition of co-operation, and enormous economic potential. But we also face long-standing challenges, not least stubborn poverty, low productivity, regional inequality, and a loss of wealth from local economies.
Community wealth building gives us a practical way of responding to those challenges. It asks us to move from an economic development model that too heavily relies on attracting activity from outside, towards one that also grows capacity from within.
That means supporting Welsh entrepreneurs. It means helping locally-rooted businesses scale. It means using procurement to strengthen Welsh supply chains. And crucially for us at Cwmpas, it means backing co-operative and social business models that also keep ownership and decision-making closer to the people and places where economic value is created.
Co-operatives, employee-owned businesses and social enterprises are central to this because they change the relationship between business success and community benefit.
The co-operative and mutual Economy 2025 report identifies 519 co-operatives in Wales, with around £500m in income. Wales leads the UK for co-operative new-starts per person. In the wider social economy, Wales now has more than 3,100 social businesses, with a turnover of up to £5.7bn each year and employing up to 68,000 people – with our mapping data showing that 84% pay the Real Living Wage to all staff.
A powerful example of what success looks like is Dulas, a worker-owned co-operative based in Machynlleth. Dulas exports solar-powered vaccine refrigerators to more than 80 countries, helping protect life-saving vaccines in some of the hardest-to-reach communities in the world. In 2024, it was named SME Exporter of the Year at the Wales Business Awards.
This shows what co-operative success can look like – locally rooted and globally relevant. It proves that Welsh-owned enterprises can innovate, export, create skilled jobs and make a huge impact without losing their connection to place.
Since 2020, Wales has seen the number of employee-owned businesses grow from 34 to more than 100. That growth shows what can happen when a clear ambition is matched with specialist support and market development. Instead of successful Welsh firms being sold to distant owners when the owner is reaching retirement, it keeps them rooted and anchored in Wales. It protects jobs, shares wealth, and supports passionate entrepreneurs to leave a legacy in the places that mean so much to them.
We can already see the benefits in businesses such as BIC Innovation, which has seen its employee numbers more than triple since becoming employee-owned.
We have a strong platform for growth, but Wales has not yet fully realised its co-operative potential. A community wealth building approach can make these questions central to economic policy.
As part of a new and integrated approach, it would complement other economic development, improving the Welsh economy from the bottom-up, in a way that strengthens local ownership, builds Welsh supply chains, improves job quality and gives communities a greater stake. That is the rebalancing Wales needs.
Cwmpas believes this is now one of the most important economic opportunities facing Wales. We need to move from celebrating individual examples to building the infrastructure that allows many more to emerge, consistently and across the country.
That means specialist business support and market development. It means better access to finance, stronger links between public procurement and local enterprise, and a clearer role for co-operative and employee-owned models in national economic strategy.
This year’s c-operatives fortnight is a moment to celebrate the businesses already showing what is possible. But it should also be a moment to think bigger. If we want growth that lasts, wealth that stays, and communities that have real power over their economic future, community wealth building must become central to how Wales thinks about prosperity.
The task now is to turn that principle into practice.
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