Brexit has already been costly for one clothes manufacturer in Gorslas.

According to the owner of Dyfed Menswear, John Williams, the family company has already lost £20,000 since the announcement that Britain would be leaving the European Union and as it continues to rely on imported materials from Germany, the figure could yet rise much higher.

The company is one of a number of Welsh business featured in the programme Huw Edwards Datganoli 20 to mark twenty years since devolution.

In order to open its base in Gorslas, the company received £250,000 of Objective One funding from Europe.

As the value of the pound has dropped since January, the company has had to increase the price of its clothes in order to regain some of its losses. “We’ve spent big money, over £200,000 on new stock coming in this year and putting new things in the system, so that’s cost us over £20,000 already as well. So that’s how much Brexit has cost us.”

And he says that the company’s situation will only deteriorate unless they gain more support from the Welsh Government as they face uncertainty over Brexit. “Rates have gone up terribly and they’re going to go up again over the next three years.” According to John Williams, the company pays £16,000 a year in costs to stay in the building. “We own the building but then we might as well not own it when we pay so much for the rates. To think that we employ so many staff here and things like that, it’s hard. You have the big electricity bill, oil works all our dry cleaning. That’s over £1,000 a month. You wonder sometimes where all the money will come from just so that you can have a little bit back in the end. The rates are starting to get out of control.”

But as we discover during the programme, John Williams isn’t sure whether it is the Assembly or the local authority who is responsible for solving the issues. “But it’s about time they stepped up and helped businesses like ours.”

Huw Edwards added: “The most striking conclusion for me, twenty years on from presenting the devolution coverage from the studio, is that the people of Wales have long since accepted the existence of a government for Wales in Cardiff, as well as the National Assembly.

“The idea of devolution, an idea which was so controversial twenty years ago, is completely normal today. There you have the biggest change that Wales has seen in recent times. And let’s remember, this is a journey which has only just begun.”

You can catch Huw Edwards Datganoli 20 on S4C at 9.30pm on Tuesday, September 19.