A Plymouth pasty company has been wound up with the loss of 22 jobs despite a valiant last-ditch rescue bid.
Pilgrim Pasties Ltd, which manufactured and made the snacks, ceased trading on February 19, 2020 after going into liquidation, but there were hopes the business could be resurrected.
Sheffield-based investor and turnaround expert Marek Niedzwiedz, who had acquired the failing company just prior to its collapse, put together a last-gasp rescue package to save the business, its employees, and its manufacturing, wholesale and retail arms.
But on March 6 he revealed that delays he attributed to interest from a third party in acquiring assets meant “we lost 90% of our customers”, and it was no longer financially viable to salvage the company.
Mr Niedzwiedz said: “The business is not trading, there are no employees. In all 22 people lost their jobs.”
But he insisted: “The business was viable, we could have rescued all the jobs.”
However, the 42-year-old businessman said delays meant the situation was beyond hope and said: “I could not wait any longer.”
T he Walkham Business Park-based firm had baking experience stretching back nearly 50 years and a city centre outlet in Plymouth Market.
Pilgrim Pasties described itself as one of the Plymouth area’s leading bakery wholesalers and a “pasty specialist”.
It was set up in 2009 by Darren Burgess and experienced pasty maker Paul Coombes, after the latter sold his established pasty company to a larger concern.
Pilgrim Pasties quickly expanded and by 2013 moved from a portable building to large premises at Burrington Way, and boasted of making 30,000 pasties a week and turning over nearly £2million a year.
The firm was boosted by winning a contest in Plymouth’s The Herald newspaper in 2012 to supply Plymouth Argyle FC. Supporters voted Pilgrim their favourite pasty maker meaning its products were sold at Home Park.
The company was also a vegetable wholesalers and supplied schools, greengrocers and other fruit and vegetable businesses, running a free delivery service.
But it had fallen on hard times by the close of 2019 . Mr Niedzwiedz, who has been involved with 148 companies during his career, acquired it on January 22, 2020 with a plan to turn it around. But he said the scale of the problem turned out to be much graver than expected.
But it had fallen on hard times by the close of 2019 and a winding up meeting took place on Friday, February 14.
That resulted in a Creditors' Voluntary Liquidation (CVL) and liquidators at Greenfield Recovery Limited were appointed.
A resolution at that meeting said: “That it has been proved to the satisfaction of this meeting that the company cannot, by reason of its current and/or impending liabilities continue its business, and that it is advisable to wind up the same under an insolvent winding up procedure.”
Pilgrim Pasties woes came just months after another South West pasty maker, Warrens Bakery, shut about 20 stores, including five in Plymouth, and one of its factories.
The 160-year-old firm blamed Brexit uncertainty and fickle consumers and cited “an ever-changing market environment, where consumers demand greater product and pricing choice”.
