Bowyers

Bowyers is a large company based in Trowbridge, Wiltshire, England. It was a manufacturer of meat products, with a well-known brand of sausages which are still produced today.

In 1805, Abraham Bowyer set up a grocers shop in Trowbridge. He became well known for his meat products, and particularly his sausages. As his business developed, Bowyer began to specialise in meat products. Merged with Wiltshire Bacon in Chippenham and Calne, and Harris in Calne, 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 Northern Foods in 1985,^[1] it was merged in 1990 with Palethorpes of Market Drayton into new company Pork Farms Bowyers. In 2001, the Bowyers and Palethorpes pork sausage business and brands were sold to Kerry Group, to allow the company to concentrate on baked meat products.^[2]

The company was bought by Vision Capital in 2007, as part of a £160 million divestment by Northern Foods.^[3] With European Union laws requiring Melton Mowbray Pork Pies to be produced within a defined distance of Melton Mowbray, the company chose to close the Bowyers plant with the loss of 400 jobs, and invest £12 million into the Nottingham plant to increase Melton Mowbray Pork Pie production.^[4] Some employees were subsequently offered jobs in the Pork Farms plant at Shaftesbury.

The site at Innox Mill, Trowbridge was bought by the Morrisons supermarket chain and cleared for redevelopment, except for the Grade II listed three-storey factory building of c. 1875.^[5] However the site was sold again in 2016.^[6]

There was also a Bowyers factory on Alexander Road, Mutley, Plymouth. It had a large chimney with the name Bowyer running down it which was very well known in the city. The factory used to be the old Bedford Brewery premises in Alexandra Road, Mutley, which became the Beechwood Factory in 1921. This was a factory producing Devonshire bacons and hams. In 1959 it came under Unigate Dairies ownership when they took over Messrs Cow & Gate. The plant was subsequently sold to Messrs Bowyer's of Wiltshire. They opened a new factory on the Newnham Industrial Estate in 1979 and the old factory was demolished. The famous chimney was taken down on the morning of May 15th 1980.

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