Missing millions as food wholesaler’s liquidation rumbles on

The Nottingham wholesale food company formerly called Asiana has entered liquidation, with creditors missing out of millions of pounds owing to them.

The firm, which changed its name to Beijing Songyou in 2022, went into liquidation last year after appointing Mercian Advisory to wind the company up.

A statement of affairs published in August of last year showed that Beijing Songyou went under owing just under £4m to creditors – cash which many of them are unlikely to see again.

Many of these creditors were based overseas. For example, a Malaysian company called FOCOB Food Industries was owed £185,000, while a firm called XIAMEN C&D was owned £255,974.

Meanwhile, HMRC was owed just over £1m, while NatWest was owed £458,266.

However, two Nottinghamshire companies – Octavian Facilities Management and Octavian IT were owed over £214,000 between them.

A liquidators report issued earlier this year show that Mercian Advisory identified a “number of areas of concern” after carrying out investigations into Beijing Songyou’s accounts. Grace & Good, which specialises in this kind of work was instructed.

The report adds: “[Grace & Good] made a significant amount of enquiries with the company director as well as the company accountants, bankers and other stakeholders in relation to payments from the company bank account as well as the movements in relation to the assets owned by the company in the period between the last set of accounts and the commencement of the liquidation.

“They submitted an initial report of their findings, and it was determined that a meeting should be held with the company director in order to obtain answers to certain areas of concern.

“The meeting was held, and the director provided answers to the queries with a promise to provide evidence in support of their position. We have yet to receive the promised evidence and are currently reviewing the position to determine whether further action is likely to result in returns being generated for the benefit of the estate.”

Asiana was acquired in a multimillion-pound management buy-out by led by Sam Sangha in 2003 with plans to push into the retail market. He resigned as a director of the company, then still called Asiana, in January 2020.