Bill Chippington folded owing creditors 0.2m
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By Ashleigh Wight
COLLAPSED operator Bill Chippington Haulage owed creditors more than £12m when it went into administration in June, it has been revealed.
The St Albans-based firm was placed in liquidation on 26 September by administrators Peter Wastell and Michael Young of FRP Advisory, three months after it ceased trading (CM 20 June).
The joint administrators' statement of affairs report showed that the former Pall-Ex member owed unsecured and preferential creditors a total of £1,202,546 as at 18 July. Significant creditor HMRC was owed a total of £453,000, while Pall-Ex was owed £119,370. The report also revealed that the liquidators expect a deficiency of £546,959 in regard
to meeting the sum owed to creditors.
Liquidator Peter Wastell was unavailable to confirm how much money creditors have received to date. However, the administrators' progress report, dated July, estimated that employees are expected to be paid in full,
while a dividend for unsecured creditors will be available in due course. The progress report also stated that the firm began experiencing financial difficulty in 2011, which it said was due to competition from foreign operators, the increase in diesel prices and customers moving
their transport and storage in-house.
As a result, the operator made a number of staff redundant and sold some of its vehicles, but fell into arrears with HMRC at the beginning of this year.
The directors had also been injecting personal funds into the company to pay staff.
In June, about 50 jobs were lost across two trading sites in St Albans and Corby, as well as its satellite sites at Milton Keynes, Wolverhampton and Peterborough, following failed attempts to restructure its finances and sell the business as a going concern.
Since it ceased trading, fellow Pall-Ex member Premier Logistics has moved into Bill Chippington's St Albans site in July, taking on the WD, AL and HA postcodes.