City Link collapse hits more than 200 NW workers
THE insolvency of parcel delivery business City Link has left 239 North West workers redundant.
Administrators at the accountancy group EY laid off 2,356 staff on New Year’s Eve after a potential rescue deal with an unnamed consortium collapsed.
Some 371 staff, with 21 at depots in the region, have been kept on to deal with a backlog of undelivered mail.
City Link’s biggest regional base is at the Appleton Thorn trading estate in Warrington where 105 people have lost their jobs. In Manchester 63 staff have been cut, and there have been 46 redundancies in Preston and 25 in Carlisle.
Administrators were appointed to City Link on Christmas Eve and blamed “substantial losses” following an unsuccessful sale process by John Moulton’s Better Capital, which has owned the Coventry-based business since April 2013.
EY said a potential rescue deal failed when the bidding consortium, which had “significantly undervalued the assets”, declined to amend their original offer.
Joint administrator Hunter Kelly said: “It is with regret that we have to announce substantial redundancies at City Link, which ceased accepting new parcels on 24 December 2014. The company endured substantial losses, which ultimately became too great for it to continue as a going concern, and City Link entered administration following an unsuccessful sale process.”
