Printing and branding firm sold in £50,000 pre-pack deal

A collapsed Derbyshire printing and branding firm has been sold out of administration in a £50,000 deal – with unsecured creditors unlikely to see any of the £840,000 owed to them.

UK Printing and Branding, based in Clowne, was sold in a pre-pack deal to S43 Trading which was set up by the management team of Adam Robinson, Michael Beahen and Rob Woolhouse to carry out the deal.

Unsecured creditors are set to miss out on money owed to them by UK Printing and Branding, says administrator FRP Advisory.

UK Printing and Branding was “significantly impacted” by the pandemic, according to documents seen by TheBusinessDesk.com.

Despite this, the company posted a profit for the year to September 2021 on a turnover of £1.14m. A year later, it filed a small loss on an increased turnover of just over £2m.

UK Printing then suffered a bad debt of £30,000 and, with payments on CBILS loans and finance agreements needing to be paid, the company’s cashflow came under serious pressure. Suppliers withdrew credit facilities and purchases of stock had to be made on a pro-forma basis.

Majority shareholder Robinson forecasted that the business needed a significant cash injection to keep it going for the next year, but that he was unable to provide a personal guarantee to support additional lending.

S43 Trading bought UK Printing and Branding out of administration in a pre-pack deal for just £50,000 on March 27 in a deal advised upon by MD Law.

Unsecured trade creditors were owed almost £840,000 when administrators were called in.