Plug pulled on set-top box firm
STOCKPORT-based packaging firm Contact Holdings’ plan to take on the giants of the set-top box market have ended, with subsidiary firm TVonics Solutions being placed into administration.
The £10m-turnover firm was bought by Stockport-based Contact Holdings four years ago after a predecessor firm, TVonics Ltd, was placed into administration.
It produced digital set-top boxes and HD recorders for the Freeview network. Components for set-top boxes were supplied by Sony but the firm employed around nine software engineers at its base at Pencoed in South Wales.
TVonics had sold its recorders through high street chains as well as via a government-funded contract related to the digital switchover.
However, after funding the business for four years in an unsuccessful bid to create a new UK electronics brand Contact Holdings finally decided to appoint Manchester-based Bell Advisory LLP as administrators to the business on June 12.
Administrator Gary Bell said that TVonics “didn’t fit with what the group was doing” any longer.
“The group was also owed substantial funds from TVonics which had been invested since they acquired it. But to go any further with it would have meant having to put even more money in, which wasn’t something they were willing to do.”
Contact Holdings, which is owned by chairman Philip Smith and group managing director Carl Butler, is continuing to trade as normal but TVonics is likely to close once alternative arrangements are made for the delivery of its government-funded contract.
