Thu, 09 Jan 2025 | ADMINISTRATION
Award-winning Derbyshire butcher Price & Fretwell has gone into administration.
The family-owned company, which was set up 30 years ago as a small village butcher's shop in Blackwell, sold to the catering trade as well as directly to the public across the East Midlands and South Yorkshire.
The company appointed Louise Williams and Ian McCulloch from Opus Restructuring as joint administrators on 30 December. All of its 34 employees were made redundant.
The company had won awards such as The Great Food Club's Catering Butcher of the Year in 2020 and the Great Taste Award in 2018. It had a purpose-built factory which enabled it to dry-age locally sourced beef on the bone for 30 days by utilising a state-of-the-art ageing fridge.
It was also the exclusive supplier of Belvoir Castle Estate Lamb and ran eight refrigerated vans delivering to trade and the public.
In its most recent filing to Companies House for the year ended 30 September 2023, it had £1.27 million of creditors' amounts falling due within one year. That was down from £1.29 million the previous year.
It had current assets of around £690,000, up from around £665,000.
According to the administrators, the company ceased trading because of the ongoing knock-on effects from the Covid-19 pandemic. This saw the forced closure of many eating establishments during periods of national lockdown.
There was also disruption to global supply chains, which has been further impacted by the war in Ukraine and geopolitical events in the Middle East.
However, even before those global events, the number of UK butchers has been in decline. That is down to the rise of supermarkets as well as more people switching to non-meat diets.
"We understand the challenges this situation has caused for those affected and are currently assessing the company's financial position," the administrators said.
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