Administrators seek buyer for pie maker’s manufacturing sites and other assets

Administrators from FRP are seeking a buyer for a longstanding pork pie manufacturer’s assets following its collapse. Vale of Mowbray fell into administration after encountering significant financial difficulties over recent years, including rising raw material input prices, recruitment challenges and increasing energy costs.

The North Yorkshire-based company, which can trace its history back to 1795, conducted a marketing process to attract fresh investment, but was unable to secure funding and was left without the resources required to continue trading.

As a result, the directors have closed the business and appointed Martyn Pullin, Mark Hodgett and David Shambrook of business advisory firm FRP as joint administrators. The joint administrators will wind the business’ operations down and seek to sell its assets, including two freehold manufacturing sites in Leeming Bar, North Yorkshire, intellectual property and plant and machinery.

Joint administrator and FRP partner Martyn Pullin said: "The Vale of Mowbray was a proud family business with a loved brand that has been synonymous with pork pies for generations. But the increasingly difficult trading conditions being experienced by many energy and labour intensive manufacturing businesses have ultimately led to the business' closure.”

"We are urgently calling on any interested parties to come forward. In the meantime, we are preparing to wind up the business' operations and move towards an asset sale in line with our statutory obligations.”

In its most recent accounts, for the year ending March 31 2021, Vale of Mowbray reported a pre-tax loss of £49,022 on turnover of £24.2 million. At the time, the company’s fixed assets were valued at £15.3 million and current assets at £2 million, with net assets of £8.3 million.

Vale of Mowbray’s administration comes just four months after it invested £4 million into a new product development (NPD) project, which saw it bring in new machinery and launch its first range of scotch eggs.


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