He might be 83 but butcher Jack Woodhead still turns up for work every day.

The octogenarian, though, is no ordinary man of meat.

He has built up his family business from a Bradford butcher's shop to a concern with a £130 million turnover which runs one of the largest abattoirs in the country.

Now Mr Woodhead, pictured, who still runs the firm with his son, nephews and grandsons, has been honoured with the most prestigious award in the livestock industry.

He credits his firm's success on a partnership formed with his friend Sir Ken Morrison, whose supermarket empire has been supplied with Woodhead meat for more than 40 years.

"I am very proud to supply Morrisons and Ken Morrison has been a big friend of me and my family," he said.

"He is a wonderful fellow and so are his family. I believe he has been the most successful man in Bradford in the last century."

Mr Woodhead said he was "enormously proud" to have been honoured by the Royal Smithfield Club for outstanding service to the meat industry.

To mark the achievement, he was presented with the club's Bicentenary Perpetual Trophy, which is valued at £11,000.

He found himself in charge of the family business aged 17 after his father fell ill only months after buying him the butcher's shop in Swain House in 1937.

Four years later, he bought his first farm on Idle Moor and he formed the Woodhead Brothers Partnership the following year. But his big break came in the early 1960s when he struck a deal to start supplying up-and-coming Bradford market traders known as Morrisons.

As Morrisons grew, so did Mr Woodhead's business, initially with an abattoir in Bradford and then, when expansion there became impossible, he proposed a joint venture with Morrisons to buy the Borthwicks Abattoir in Colne, Lancashire, in 1991.

That has now expanded to become the biggest three-species abattoir in the country, supplying 7,000 lambs and 5,000 pigs to Morrisons stores around the UK every week.

"The Morrisons are so down to earth and have given me a wonderful opportunity and I have looked after his business as if it was mine," said Mr Woodhead, who has had to focus all his energies on meeting Morrisons' growing demands.

"We have never had a wrong word between us all these years and I am confident that they have the best quality meat in the country. As a firm, they support the farmers tremendously."

Mr Woodhead, who was chairman of the Federation of Fresh Meat Wholesalers in the North of England for many years, said he still loved being involved in the running of the firm.

"I still go to work every day and really enjoy the challenge," he said.

"I am very fortunate in that I have a son, nephew and grandsons that see the job progresses well and they've taken the brunt of the management duties."

And, although he has now moved to Cowling after a lifetime living in Idle where he was president of the local operatic society, Mr Woodhead remains committed to Bradford.

"Both Ken and myself are from Bradford and proud of it and I am really pleased that he has decided to build his new head office here," he said.

"I never dreamed the company could get this big, but I could never have achieved it without Sir Ken."