Woodmace Plant Limited (08655109): administration
- Status
- Administration ended
- Administration began
- 2022-07-11
- Administrators
- Jeremy Karr, Andrew Hook, Simon John Killick
- Administrators' firm
- Begbies Traynor
- Incorporated
- 2013-08-19
- Location
- London
- Industry
- 33120 Repair of machinery
Why it went into administration
- Creditor pressure / legal action
- Loss-making contracts / project overruns
- Competition / price pressure
- COVID-19
- Funding withdrawn / unable to refinance
- Rising costs / inflation
- Bad debts / customer insolvency
- Credit insurance / supplier credit withdrawn
From the administrators' statement
Woodmace is an established civil engineering and construction business which conducted its business activities through two associated companies (“the Companies”), Woodmace Limited (“WML”) which was incorporated in 1986 and undertook the business and delivered the contracts to clients and Woodmace Plant Ltd (“the Company”) which was incorporated in 2013 and which held the plant and equipment used by WML.
WML began to experience financial difficulties as a consequence of large tier 1 main contractors delaying payment and/or withholding payment and running up large differences on accounts running into the millions of pounds. The position was exacerbated by extremely volatile cost inflation on materials due to the impact of the Covid 19 pandemic. WML suffered a number of client failures and, as a consequence, a number of unrecoverable bad debts. As a result, WML experienced pressure on cashflow and creditor pressure which led to legal debt recovery enforcement action being taken and winding up petitions being served on the companies. Credit insurance agencies removed credit limits which resulted in the business moving on to cash accounts which served to increase the creditor pressure. Ultimately a significant number of County Court Judgments and winding up petitions built up to an unsustainable level.
As a result of the operational challenges experienced by WML it was unable to address its ongoing liability to the Company in relation to the use of the plant and equipment and the Company was consequently unable to meet its finance obligations.
Administrators' statement of proposals (2022-09-09) · Companies House register