After scooping six Gold Awards and three prestigious ‘Champion’ titles, Vaughans Family Butchers will be holding some major celebrations this week.

The Penyfford family butcher achieved a gold award for every one of its products entered into the North West Butchers Pork Product Excellence Awards, organised by BPEX on 25 September. What’s more, they topped three of the twelve categories to walk away as champions in the ‘Speciality Pork Sausage’, ‘Pork Ready Meal’ and ‘Young Sausage Maker’ categories

The event, at the Reebok Stadium, drew in 40 butchers with some 250 products for judges to sample.

For seasoned award-winners Steve and Helen Vaughan, the moment was all the more special as two of the category triumphs came for their young butcher Matthew Edwards. At just 21 years old, Vaughan Family Butchers employee Matthew picked up the Young Sausage Maker title having only worked at the butchery for a mere eight months.

Matthew said: “It’s fantastic to be recognised as a young butcher. At 15 I started working at a local butcher shop on a Saturday and since then I have taken it up as a full-time career; I love interacting with customers and developing new products, so I jumped at the chance to showcase my ‘Traditional Pork Sausage’ to the team of industry judges.”