Our Story

Where it all Started?

Weschenfelder Direct has been in the sausage-making game since 1921.  Ludwig Weschenfelder emigrated from Nuremberg to Middlesbrough in 1898 and found a job as a Butcher’s apprentice. He worked at a local German butcher named Karl Koch Butchers in Middlesbrough. Whilst working long hours in the butchery he found the time to meet another local apprentice butcher Luise Schumm who he went on to marry.

Obviously, it wasn't plain sailing being a German in the early 1900s. At the start of the 1st World War, as a German living in the UK, he was interned at Knockaloe Camp, Isle of Man during the war. 

On his release returned to Middlesbrough in 1921. With an entrepreneurial eye, he realised there was an opportunity to supply the local butchers with high-quality casings with no compromise, and quickly built up a reputation.

In the midst of the Industrial Revolution, he set up a small factory where all the casings could be measured and traced with greater quality control. The Weschenfelder name was soon beginning to spread throughout the hundreds of butcheries in the North East of England.

The factory was then passed on through the generations until in 2008 it was sold to Harder Brothers. With the world changing and the digital era becoming more and more prominent, the new generation has taken Ludwig's philosophy into the online world.

Supplying butchery supplies with no compromise to quality is the mantra that has been set out. Today Tim, Rob and Nic Weschenfelder are all part of the family business with family friend Kate running the office.