Applegreen’s Welcome Break Expands with Cornwall Services Acquisition

Applegreen has expanded its Welcome Break motorway services business in Britain with the acquisition of Cornwall’s only major services area.

Cornwall Services, which is located near Bodwin at the A30 in Cornwall, is home to a Shell filing station and a range of food and retail outlets including McDonald’s, Greggs, Taco Bell, Costa, and Mountain Warehouse.

The Cornwall service area opened in 2014 and employs about 200 people in a mixture of full-time and part-time roles.

“We are delighted to add what is a very popular service area to our existing Welcome Break motorway network in the UK,” said Welcome Break Chief Executive John Diviney.

“We look forward to working with the brands that are on site and will continue to offer road users to opportunity to rest, refuel and continue on their journey as they travel in and out of Cornwall.”

Welcome Break operates 61 service areas and 31 hotels in the UK, employing more than 6,000 people and serving more than 85 million customers every year. It is currently embarking on a major capital expenditure programme across its UK network.

“We plan to invest about £400 million (€463 million) in our service area business over the next five years through building new facilities and upgrading our existing locations,” Mr Diviney said.

“We’re a long-term investor in the British economy and we see significant potential to add further to our existing network and also to upgrade our existing portfolio on a regular basis,” he added. “We have a strong pipeline of new motorway and A road sites across Britain, and we are working to progress those.”

Last January, Welcome Break opened a new £55 million state-of-the-art new motorway service area just off the M1 at Rotherham in January. In July, it added a new £12 million services area on a A46/A406 at Hickling, south of Nottingham. The two developments created a total of 250 new jobs.

Welcome Break which can trace its roots back to 1959 and the beginning of motorway services in Britain, is a leading operator of motorway and roadside service areas in the UK.

It has partnerships with leading food and beverage brands such as Burger King, Chopstix, Greggs, Krispy Kreme, KFC, Pizza Express, Pret, Starbucks, Subway, Taco Bell, The Good Breakfast and the Phat Pasty Company. Its retail partners include Londis, Waitrose, and WH Smith.

Welcome Break is majority owned by Applegreen, which also operates motorway service areas and forecourts in Ireland and the United States.

Applegreen operates about 435 locations in Ireland, the UK and the US and is currently investing €1 billion to expand its business. Applegreen had annual sales of €3.8 billion in 2024 and employs about 16,900 people.