Pork Farms is a
Nottingham
Nottingham ( , East Midlands English, locally ) is a city status in the United Kingdom, city and Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority area in Nottinghamshire, East Midlands, England. It is located north-west of London, south-east ...
-based British producer and distributor of mainly pork-based bakery products. The company grew from a pie shop founded in 1931, and was floated on the
London Stock Exchange
London Stock Exchange (LSE) is a stock exchange in the City of London, England, United Kingdom. , the total market value of all companies trading on LSE was £3.9 trillion. Its current premises are situated in Paternoster Square close to St Pau ...
in 1971. After several sales and amalgamations, since 2017 the brand has been owned by
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 ...
.
History
In the early 1940s, recently
City and Guilds
The City and Guilds of London Institute is an educational organisation in the United Kingdom. Founded on 11 November 1878 by the City of London and 16 livery companies – to develop a national system of technical education, the institute has ...
qualified
baker
A baker is a tradesperson who bakes and sometimes sells breads and other products made of flour by using an oven or other concentrated heat source. The place where a baker works is called a bakery.
History
Ancient history
Since grains ha ...
Ken Parr received a £9,000 loan to open his own
pie shop
A pie shop is a take away (fast food) outlet specialising in pies, especially meat pies. Common in some parts of the United Kingdom and Australia.
A form of specialised bakery, or in more recent times purely a retail outlet selling reheated cooke ...
. He developed a reputation founded on good baking, and developed the first "original"
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 ...
based on an old recipe, with signature dark and crispy pastry. He then bought another local pie shop, founded in 1931 which traded under the name Pork Farms, which he adopted for all of his shops.
In the mid-1960s, Parr's business was bought by food tycoon
W. Garfield Weston, who made Parr Chairman. In 1969, rival Nottingham pie company TN Parr, formerly owned by Parr’s uncle but then by
Samworth Brothers
Samworth Brothers is a British food manufacturer which produces a range of chilled and ambient foods, both own-label and branded. It is the owner of Cornish pasty maker Ginsters and malt loaf manufacturer Soreen, and is also known as a maker o ...
, bought out Pork Farms, again bringing together the two companies together under the Pork Farms brand. In 1972, Pork Farms bought rival
Holland's Pies
Holland's Pies is a manufacturer of pies and puddings based in Baxenden, near Accrington in Lancashire, England. Owned by 2 Sisters Food Group, the company also produces pasties and sausage rolls.
History
Holland's was founded by father a ...
. In 1971, the group was floated on the
London Stock Exchange
London Stock Exchange (LSE) is a stock exchange in the City of London, England, United Kingdom. , the total market value of all companies trading on LSE was £3.9 trillion. Its current premises are situated in Paternoster Square close to St Pau ...
as Pork Farms Ltd.
In 1974, Pork Farms and
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, ...
created joint venture company Porkdown Ltd, to supply meat products to French foods group
Danone
Danone S.A. () is a French multinational corporation, multinational food-products corporation based in Paris. It was founded in Barcelona, Spain. It is listed on Euronext Paris where it is a component of the CAC 40 stock market index. Some of t ...
. But immediately after production started, Danone undertook a group-wide review, and on deciding to concentrate on their
milk
Milk is a white liquid food produced by the mammary glands of mammals. It is the primary source of nutrition for young mammals (including breastfed human infants) before they are able to digestion, digest solid food. Immune factors and immune ...
-based products line, closed down the contract. The resultant losses closed Porkdown, and in 1978 lead to the agreed sale of Pork Farms to Northern Foods, after the Samworth family agreed sale of their shares to the group. Later merged by Northern with both
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 ...
of
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 ...
and
Bowyers
A bowyer is a master-craftsman who makes bows. Though this was once a widespread profession, the importance of bowyers and of bows was diminished by the introduction of gunpowder weaponry. However, the trade has survived and many bowyers conti ...
of
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, to form Pork Farms Bowyers, the company sold the Bowyers and Palethorpes pork sausage business and brands to the
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 ...
in 2001, to concentrate on baked meat products.
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, 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 focusing on the need to produce
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 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 and invest £12 million into the Nottingham plant to increase Melton Mowbray pie production. In 2010, the company employed over 2,000 people at five locations, in
Poole
Poole () is a large coastal town and seaport in Dorset, on the south coast of England. The town is east of Dorchester and adjoins Bournemouth to the east. Since 1 April 2019, the local authority is Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Counc ...
, Nottingham, Market Drayton and
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 2011, Pork Farms commemorated its 80th anniversary with a £1 million relaunch and a new range of slices. Packaging carried the straplines 'Making & Baking since 1931' and 'Butchers, Bakers, Master Piemakers'.
In 2014, the company proposed to buy two pastry product manufacturing sites, at
Spalding and Poole, from Kerry Group; the sale was approved in 2015 on completion of an investigation by the
Competition and Markets Authority
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is the competition regulator in United Kingdom. It is a non-ministerial government department in the United Kingdom, responsible for strengthening business competition and preventing and reducing anti-com ...
. The same year, Vision Capital combined Pork Farms with other chilled savoury pastry brands under Addo Food Group.
Present
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.
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:PorkFarms
British pie brands
Companies based in Nottinghamshire
Food and drink companies established in 1931
Companies formerly listed on the London Stock Exchange
Meat companies of the United Kingdom
Northern Foods
Bakeries of the United Kingdom
1931 establishments in England