Started by Aalt Verkerk in 1956, it has over the years become a Christchurch landmark for discerning meat lovers. Like so many other Christchurch businesses, the February 22 earthquake put an end to that.

Mr Verkerk, in his late 80s, is still a regular and colourful figure at the weekly livestock sales at Canterbury Park in Christchurch. Last week he was there with his son-in-law and granddaughter.

After living through Nazi occupation in The Netherlands, he came to New Zealand as a trained master butcher in 1952.

He said a very old butchery was on the site of the Verkerk shop in Christchurch when he started his business in 1956. “The rings to tie up horses were still there.”

The shop has been rebuilt twice since then, and the last time Mr Verkerk commissioned an outside tile wall in the style of the famous Dutch painter Piet Mondrian.

In his early days in Christchurch he had been told that the shop site was already a butchery and slaughter house when Victoria Square was still a livestock market in Christchurch.

He said the city shop was badly damaged in the earthquake and wouldn’t be rebuilt. The Verkerk board had yet to decide whether to rebuild elsewhere.

However for a long time the company’s traditional European small goods business, which sends meat products around the country, has been a much bigger part of the business.

Mr Verkerk said the small goods factory and factory shop in Vagues Road in the north of the city was still operating, although 60,000 litres of water a week was having to be carted there and waste removed. “At the moment we’re doing all the work the city council used to do.”

The 11 staff from the city shop have been redeployed at the Christchurch factory or at the company’s abattoir in Ashburton.