More than 30 jobs lost in Rotherham as meat retailer goes into administration

Crawshaws has made 25 staff at its head office and warehouse in Hellaby redundant — 11 in head office and 14 in production — but the site will remain open.

Its Rotherham town centre shop on Howard Street has closed, making seven people redundant.

Crawshaws factory outlet at Spar, on Manvers Way, Wath, which opened on October 12, will remain open.

Administrators EY said a number of Crawshaws’ high street stores had become loss-making.

The butchers, which was founded in 1954, has closed 35 stores across the midlands and the north, making 354 people redundant in total.

It has kept 19 profitable stores open and is looking for a buyer to preserve the remaining 261 jobs.

Crawshaws announced last week that it did not have “sufficient cash resources” to restructure its business.

It said it had been in discussion with existing and potential investors but could not raise sufficient capital to continue trading.

Hunter Kelly, joint administrator at EY, said: “Crawshaws has not been immune to the well-documented issues on the high street, which has resulted in a number of stores becoming loss-making.

“Despite the new management team’s best efforts, it was not possible to raise additional investment to restructure the business by reducing the number of high street stores and expanding its successful factory shop format and in-store Spar butchery offering.

“As a result the group would have run out of cash due to the loss-making high street stores and therefore administration was necessary.

“Crawshaws’ out of town factory store format has proved to be successful and we are hopeful that a purchaser can be found who can take forward management’s plan for these profitable stores. 

“We are continuing to trade 19 profitable stores and the Hellaby processing and distribution centre as normal and would encourage interested parties to come forward.

“Unfortunately, it was necessary to immediately close 35 stores in mainly high street locations that were no longer viable, which resulted in 354 redundancies.”

An EY spokesman said employees affected by redundancy were being offered advice and support in making claims from the redundancy payments office for outstanding wages, as well as redundancy and notice pay.

Employees have been or will be paid their outstanding wages as normal, said the spokesman.