Industry Food manufacturing Successor Kerry Group Founded 1805 Parent organization Northern Foods | Fate Disposed/Closed Headquarters Trowbridge Defunct 2008 | |
Former type Private company, Subsidiary Key people Abraham Bowyer (founder) | ||
Bowyers was 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, 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.
The company was bought by Vision Capital in 2007, as part of a £160 million divestment by Northern Foods. 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. 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. However the site was sold again in 2016.