THE demise of St Helens bakers John Pimblett & Sons illustrates how hard it has become to get the financial recipe right in the food industry.

The 87-year-old business went into administration blaming a combination of falling consumer spending and rising food prices.

But, as the problems of Sayers earlier this year showed, the difficulties relate to far more than just the current credit crunch.

Sayers, which was founded in Old Swan in 1912, closed 40 shops and its Norris Green bakery in June after a management team bought the firm back from the administrators. The new firm, Sayers the Bakers, employs 1,500 staff at 158 stores and has a Bolton bakery.

Pimblett’s 10 stores – nine in St Helens and one in Widnes – have been bought by Leigh bakers Waterfield’s, but its bakery has shut with the loss of 60 jobs.

It ended at a stroke a famous St Helens company which, to the locals, was as much a part of the town’s identity as Pilkington and rugby league.

But, as well as the wider economic problems, the company appears to have suffered from changes to the way it made its pies and pastries. Commenting on the LDP Business mobile site, David Green said: “Pimblett’s was always going to close after they put the new production line in a few years ago which forced the recipe to change.”

And disparaging comments came from no less an authoritative source on St Helens matters as comedian Johnny Vegas, who described Pimblett’s steak pies as something “you could put through a mangle” in an interview with a national newspaper last year. But opinion is divided. Charles Nevin, author of an affectionate portrait of the red rose county, Lancashire, Where Women Die of Love, has described Pimblett’s meat and potato pie as “the finest I’ve tasted”.

However, despite the troubles of Sayers and Pimblett’s, it seems the taste for pastry products is undimmed. Greggs now has 1,400 stores and will achieve its target of a net opening of 40 stores in 2008, including outlets in Liverpool One and North John Street.

alex.turner