THE administrators of collapsed textiles firm Westwood Yarns are seeking buyers for its 160,000 sq ft site in Holmfirth after making three-quarters of its 130-strong workforce redundant.
KPMG’s Paul Flint and David Costley-Wood were appointed two days before Christmas and have this week made 94 staff redundant. They plan to continue to run the business “in a limited capacity for a short period”.
While the administrators said yesterday they had received interest from “a number of parties” looking to buy the business as a going concern, Mr Flint expressly urged anyone interested it the site’s freehold, as well as its plant and machinery, to come forward.
TheBusinessDesk.com previously revealed how Westwood Yarns’ collapse came just three months after its new owners paid nearly £1m in cash for the business.
Former owners Victoria Carpets, who had owned the wool carpet yarn business for 26 years and provided 90% of its work, offloaded the company in September with a devastating critique of its future prospects.
Victoria’s chairman Geoff Wilding said there were “a limited number of buyers willing to pay actual money for a loss-making, structurally uncompetitive, sub-scale business operating in a declining sector”.
Despite that, the carpet retailer completed the sale, having received £1m in cash, freed-up another £1m previously tied up in working capital and taken a loss of £1.46m on the asset’s carrying value, which is a non-cash item.
Westwood Yarns new board consisted of textile entrepreneurs Richard Collinge and Tim Kay, alongside Westwood Yarns’ managing director Trevor Chippendale, who has been on the board for 10 years.
Mr Collinge and Mr Kay also own 30% of Lawton Yarns, in Ravensthorpe, Dewsbury, which was created in 2012 through the merger of Huddersfield carpet yarn spinner Fred Lawton & Son and William S Graham, of Ravensthorpe.
Westwood Yarns’ most recent accounts, for the year to March 2014, showed a marginal pre-tax profit of £51,000 despite increasing sales by 20% to £12.2m. Accounts for the year to March 2015 had been due to be filed by the end of December.
The company blamed “severe cash flow difficulties” for its problems that led to the appointment of administrators.
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