Butchers closes shop after 35 years

A firm of family butchers has closed a Black Country shop after more than three decades of supplying customers with pork chops, bacon and pies.

AE Poxon & Sons Ltd has shut up shop in Park Street Arcade, Walsall, after 35 years – but directors today stressed it is business as usual at the branch in High Street, Brownhills. The company, which celebrated its 80th anniversary last year, decided to close the town centre butchers after buying a second factory which will be used for sausage and black pudding manufacturing.

Directors Chris and Nick Poxon, grandsons of AE Poxon, said they wanted to concentrate on the manufacturing and wholesale sides of their thriving business. They are not connected to the Poxon butchers in Wolverhampton.

Chris Poxon said: "Retail is a minuscule part of what we do. We are largely a wholesale outfit and supply an awful lot of independent butchers across the Midlands. You have to move with the times and we have decided to concentrate our energy elsewhere."

The cousins, both aged 49, are the sons of Albert and Gordon Poxon, whose father founded the business in 1927. They each have two young daughters.The recently acquired factory, a mile from the Brownhills butchers which has a factory behind it, will open in June.

Mr Poxon added: "We are going stronger than ever, expanding in other directions." It was hoped the shop in Park Street Arcade, opposite Walsall Bus Station, would be taken over by another butchers when the lease expired at the end of the year but it is empty, with a hand-written notice in the shop front to explain to customers what has happened.

Yesterday it was revealed that Elizabeth's Delicatessen and Cafe, in Bridge Street, Walsall, closed. It opened in August.

The shop, owned by Elizabeth Boyd, of Shelfield, specialised in rare treats such as ostrich pate and orchid ice cream but bailiffs Blue City Properties were called to the shop to seize its assets.