Bowyers was a company known for the manufacture of meat products, including a brand of

sausages A sausage is a type of meat product usually made from ground meat—often pork, beef, or poultry—along with salt, spices and other flavourings. Other ingredients, such as grains or breadcrumbs may be included as fillers or extenders. W ...

, which was based in

Trowbridge Trowbridge ( ) is the county town of Wiltshire, England, on the River Biss in the west of the county. It is near the border with Somerset and lies southeast of Bath, 31 miles (49 km) southwest of Swindon and 20 miles (32 km) southe ...

, Wiltshire, England. The company was acquired by

Northern Foods Northern Foods is a British food manufacturer headquartered in Wakefield, England. It was formerly listed on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the original FTSE 100 Index. The company is credited, together with Marks & Spencer, ...

in 1985, and passed through two other owners until the Trowbridge factory was closed in 2007. The brand is used by Addo Food Group for ranges of sausage rolls, pork pies and quiches.

History

In 1805, Abraham Bowyer established a

grocers The Worshipful Company of Grocers is one of the 110 Livery Companies of the City of London and ranks second in order of precedence. The Grocers' Company was established in 1345 for merchants occupied in the trade of grocer and is one of the Gr ...

shop in Trowbridge. He became known for his meat products, in particular for his sausages, and eventually specialised in meat products. Merged with Wiltshire Bacon in

Chippenham Chippenham is a market town A market town is a settlement most common in Europe that obtained by custom or royal charter, in the Middle Ages, a market right, which allowed it to host a regular market; this distinguished it from a village ...

and

Calne Calne () is a town and civil parish in Wiltshire, southwestern England,OS Explorer Map 156, Chippenham and Bradford-on-Avon Scale: 1:25 000.Publisher: Ordnance Survey A2 edition (2007). at the northwestern extremity of the North Wessex Downs h ...

, and Harris in

, Bowyers became part of the Marsh Bodiner Group. This allowed a capital injection which resulted in the company's move into Innox Mill, Trowbridge in 1954. Acquired by

in 1985, it was merged in 1990 with

Palethorpes Palethorpe's is a British producer of cooked meat and pastry products and was particularly well known for its branded sausages. Founded in 1852, it was bought by the Bibby Group in 1969 and then by Haverhill Meat Products (a J Sainsbury and Canad ...

Market Drayton Market Drayton is a market town and electoral ward in the north of Shropshire, England, close to the Cheshire and Staffordshire borders. It is on the River Tern, and was formerly known as "Drayton in Hales" (c. 1868) and earlier simply as "Dray ...

into new company Pork Farms Bowyers. In 2001, the Bowyers and Palethorpes pork sausage business and brands were sold to

Kerry Group Kerry Group plc is a public food company headquartered in Ireland. It is quoted on the Dublin ISEQ and London stock exchanges. Given the company's origins in the co-operative movement, farmer-suppliers of the company retain a significant int ...

, to allow the company to concentrate on baked meat products. The company was bought by

private equity In the field of finance, the term private equity (PE) refers to investment funds, usually limited partnerships (LP), which buy and restructure financially weak companies that produce goods and provide services. A private-equity fund is both a ty ...

firm

Vision Capital Vision Capital is an international investor with a flexible capital approach to investing in mid-size private companies that has its headquarters in Western Europe and North America. The company specializes in both the dynamics of private equit ...

in 2007, as part of a £160 million divestment by Northern Foods. With

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been des ...

legislation requiring

Melton Mowbray pork pie A pork pie is a traditional English meat pie, usually served either at room temperature or cold (although often served hot in Yorkshire). It consists of a filling of roughly chopped pork and pork fat, surrounded by a layer of jellied pork stock ...

s to be produced within a defined distance of

Melton Mowbray Melton Mowbray () is a town in Leicestershire, England, north-east of Leicester, and south-east of Nottingham. It lies on the River Eye, known below Melton as the Wreake. The town had a population 27,670 in 2019. The town is sometimes promo ...

, the company chose to close the Trowbridge plant with the loss of 400 jobs, and invest £12 million into the Nottingham plant to increase Melton Mowbray pie production. Some employees were subsequently offered jobs in the Pork Farms plant at

Shaftesbury Shaftesbury () is a town and civil parish in Dorset, England. It is situated on the A30 road, west of Salisbury, near the border with Wiltshire. It is the only significant hilltop settlement in Dorset, being built about above sea level on a ...

. In 2015, Vision Capital combined Bowyers with other chilled savoury pastry brands under Addo Food Group. In 2017, Addo was sold to

Lloyds Development Capital Lloyds Development Capital (Holdings) Limited (LDC), is a mid-market private equity house and subsidiary of Lloyds Banking Group, established in 1981 as Lloyds Development Capital Limited. From 1999 to 2011, it was known as Lloyds TSB Developme ...

, another private equity firm.

Sites

The site at Innox Mill, Trowbridge was bought by the

Morrisons Wm Morrison Supermarkets, trading as Morrisons, is the fifth largest supermarket chain in the United Kingdom. As of 2021, the company had 497 supermarkets across England, Wales and Scotland, as well as one in Gibraltar. The company is headqua ...

supermarket chain and cleared for redevelopment, except for the

Grade II listed In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

three-storey factory building of c. 1875. However, the site was sold again in 2016. There was also a Bowyers factory on Alexander Road, Mutley,

Plymouth Plymouth () is a port city and unitary authority in South West England. It is located on the south coast of Devon, approximately south-west of Exeter and south-west of London. It is bordered by Cornwall to the west and south-west. Plymouth ...

. The site had a large chimney with the name Bowyer running down it. The factory was formerly the Bedford Brewery premises which became the Beechwood factory in 1921, producing Devonshire bacons and hams. In 1959, it came under Unigate Dairies ownership when they took over

Cow & Gate Cow & Gate was a United Kingdom based dairy products company, which expanded into milk bottling, distribution, and baby food production. It merged in 1959 with United Dairies to form Unigate plc, which today is known as Uniq plc. The Cow & Gate br ...

. The plant was sold to Bowyer's, who opened a new factory on the Newnham Industrial Estate in 1979 and the old factory was demolished; the chimney was taken down in May 1980.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bowyers 1805 establishments in England Companies based in Wiltshire Meat companies of the United Kingdom Northern Foods Companies disestablished in 2007 Trowbridge Sausage companies Food and drink companies established in 1805