Eleven Months in the Making: We Have Acquired Procters Sausages

By Jack Bosworth, Director, FJ Bosworth & Sons. Published 11 September 2024.

I hope everyone is well.

There is a real feeling of relief as I sit down to write this one, for several reasons.

Harvest is finished

First, harvest is finished. A massive well done to everyone involved, particularly Ed, who has had a heavy workload to handle during his first harvest with us. He has more than risen to it.

The big one: Procters Sausages joins the family

Second, and after a long, long time coming, we have finally completed on the acquisition of another company specialising in the production of sausages.

This is a deal I have been working on for the last 11 months. I am delighted, and relieved, that we have got it over the line.

The acquisition covers the whole business, including:

• The retail shop.
• The production unit.
• The 30-year, well-established and locally recognised brand.
• The staff.
• The recipes.
• The machinery.

Long-time readers of these pieces will know we have been very keen to get further along the supply chain from farm to fork. From the original ambition to sell our pork direct that I wrote about in late 2021, through butchery training, conversations with experts, a planning application that was ultimately recommended for refusal, this acquisition is the answer we have been working towards for the best part of three years.

Rather than build a butchery from scratch on the farm, we are now taking on a brand that has spent thirty years building up the recognition, recipes and customer base that any new build would have taken a decade or more to establish.

For us, that is the right answer to the right problem at the right time.

If you want to follow our progress, or even try some of our fantastic products, please do find Procters Sausages on Facebook.

Back to the farm: the Agsenze and Agrisys gilt weighing trial

Back to the farm, and I have just been reviewing some of the data coming through from the trial we have going on with Agsenze.

For those who have not read about this on a previous piece, here is how it works:

• Agrisys have supplied a weighing system.
• This is being used alongside a camera system installed for Agsenze.
• The goal is to develop a condition scoring system based on digital images, rather than relying on individual weighing or naked-eye scoring.

The data we are getting is the individual weight of around 200 gilts and sows during gestation. The animals go over the scales after every visit to the feeder, and we get a weekly average of those many weights to see how weight has changed over the course of the week.

It is already interesting to note that the system is giving Alex, our most experienced stockperson, new information that he does not think he would have otherwise picked up by eye. That is exactly the kind of decision-support tool a precision approach to stockmanship is supposed to deliver.

What is next on this

We are having a sit down with our nutritionist in the next few weeks. The data from the trial will be used to demonstrate whether the feed quality and quantity needs further optimisation to keep gilts and sows within the right parameters for age, parity and stage of gestation.

I will report back on what we learn.

---

Editor’s note (May 2026)

Procters Sausages now operates as part of FJ Bosworth & Sons, with pork from our herd processed into Procters products. You can read more on the Our Pork section of this site, or visit procters-sausages.co.uk directly. In the same year as the acquisition, FJ Bosworth & Sons won the National Pig Awards Sustainable Farming Award 2024.

About the author

Jack Bosworth is a fourth-generation farmer and Director of FJ Bosworth & Sons, an arable and pig farming business at Spains Hall, Willingale, Essex. The farm has been in the family since 1919, and Jack farms alongside his father Stuart Bosworth, who was named Farmers Weekly Pig Farmer of the Year in 2011. The business is Red Tractor assured and runs an integrated farm-to-fork model, with home-grown cereals milled on site using solar-generated electricity.

You can follow Jack’s articles on fjbosworth.com, or get in touch via the WhatsApp link on the site.