Just two butchers left ...

Another of the shrinking number of retail butcher shops west of the Southern Alps has bitten the dust with the closure of the 70-year-old Oxnam's Butchery in Westport.

There are now just two butchers left on the West Coast - in Runanga, north of Greymouth, and Kaniere, inland from Hokitika.

Director Reece Walsh said the "meat game" had changed a lot in the seven decades his family had managed Oxnam's.

"To survive now, you need to be on a big scale. There's very, very few small-to-medium sized operators left now."