TL;DR
Around 300 people gathered in Caernarfon on Saturday 10 October to oppose a proposed AI data centre beside the Menai Strait in north Wales. A petition against the scheme has passed 22,000 signatures. The centre would occupy the empty site of the old Ferodo factory at Griffith’s Crossing, and the local Plaid Cymru MP has said she opposes it.
The scheme and the objections
The developers say the facility would bring 200 permanent jobs, plus hundreds more while it is being built. Their outline planning application to Cyngor Gwynedd describes a “highly sustainable digital infrastructure facility” meant to strengthen Welsh data and technology capability.
Opponents focus on scale. Liz Saville Roberts, MP for Dwyfor Meirionnydd, who spoke at the rally, said the complex would cover the equivalent of 57 football pitches, calling the plans “staggering”. She questioned whether the promised jobs justify a project that size, arguing that the developers must prove a “clear and lasting benefit” to local people.
Her list of concerns covers possible contamination when the site is cleared, how much water the centre would need, the loss of productive farmland and the effect on the landscape. Taken together, she concluded, “the risks far outweigh the claimed benefits”.
A site with a long history
The Ferodo plant once employed up to 1,500 people making brake linings and pads. It became known for the Friction Dynamics dispute, a picket that ran from 2001 into 2003 and lasted almost 1,000 days, and has stood empty since closing soon afterwards. Earlier ideas for the land ranged from a prison to leisure use.
The Menai scheme is not the only Welsh proposal drawing fire. Wales Online also points to controversy in Cardiff over a planned data centre on the Cardiff East Park and Ride site in Llanrumney.
Looking forward
Gwynedd’s planners now face a familiar trade-off in sharper form: a long-derelict brownfield site and a jobs pledge on one side, and water use, landscape and a large organised opposition on the other. In our view, the 200-job figure will be the test the scheme has to pass, because it is the benefit opponents are already disputing. For UK communities weighing AI infrastructure, the case shows that reusing an industrial site does not by itself defuse local objections once the footprint is large enough.