Meet the Buyers Expo, Llandudno, 17 September — 45 buyers, one question

Next Thursday the biggest free buyer-supplier day in North Wales is back. The Business Wales Meet the Buyers Expo is at Venue Cymru, Llandudno on Thursday 17 September 2026, 9am–2.30pm, last admission 2pm. Swansea follows on 15 October at the Swansea Building Society Arena. Both are free and funded by Welsh Government. This post covers who is in the room, what they will ask, and how to answer it.

The dates

The 2024 series drew over 1,000 attendees, 110 exhibitors and 872 live contract opportunities across the two days, according to Business Wales. Every event has a Support Zone for firms new to public bidding.

Who is on the Llandudno exhibitor list

The published list runs to 45 buyers and support bodies. For contractors and subcontractors, the ones to plan a route around:

• Main contractors: Wynne Construction, Read Construction, Pave-Aways, SWG Construction and the North Wales Construction Partnership framework.
• Energy and nuclear: Great British Energy – Nuclear with Rolls-Royce SMR (Wylfa), Sizewell C, Morlais, Trydan Gwyrdd Cymru and Heidelberg Materials' Padeswood carbon capture project.
• Public bodies: Welsh Government, Transport for Wales, NHS Wales, Natural Resources Wales, Gwynedd Council, Conwy County Borough Council and the Welsh Procurement Alliance.
• Housing: Adra and the Ffrâm24 all-Wales framework, plus the Welsh Government Housing Quality Division.
• Skills and support: CITB, Busnes@LlandrilloMenai, Cwmpas, FSB Wales, Constructing Excellence in Wales and the West Cheshire & North Wales Chamber.

That is the North Wales pipeline in one hall: Wylfa, housing retrofit, rail, NHS estates and the regional construction framework, with the Tier 1s who subcontract most of it.

The question every stand will ask

Since 25 March 2026 the socially responsible procurement duty under the Social Partnership and Public Procurement (Wales) Act has applied to most Welsh public contracts, and in-scope bodies now publish an annual report on what their procurement delivered. We covered the detail in Wales just pulled the small contracts into the social value net. The main contractors on that list carry community benefit commitments on every framework call-off, and they need their supply chain to deliver and record a share of it.

So the question at the stand will not be "do you do social value?" It will be "what did you deliver last year, and can you show it?" An answer in anecdotes — a school visit, an apprentice, a Saturday at the community centre — is what most firms bring. An answer in hours, recognised proxy values and a dated report is what gets a follow-up email.

What to have in your hand

• One page of costed social value for the last 12 months: the activity, the hours, the £ figure and the rate it was costed at, with the source and year shown.
• Two or three named examples a buyer can picture — which school, which site, which community group — each with a date.
• What you can commit to on their contract: a site visit per term, a work-experience placement, a set number of volunteer hours. Buyers write these into call-offs, so offer something you can deliver and record.

If you have the activity but not the record, that is fixable before Thursday. Log the sessions you already ran this year — each takes about two minutes — and a costed report is emailed to you instantly. Print it. That is the page.

We keep a running list of supplier events — free, updated as they are confirmed — at owlimpact.wales/meetthebuyer. Organisers can submit events there too.