Liquidated North East steel supplier owed creditors £6.2m

Intelligent Steel Solutions owed more than £6m when it began the process of liquidation last month, it has emerged.

A statement of the structural steel supplier’s affairs, published on Companies House this week, shows it owed £6.2m to unsecured creditors.

Most of the money it owed, some £3.95m, related to intercompany loans from related firms including its largest shareholder, residential contractor Henley Construct.

South London-based Henley Construct was owed £1.48m at the time and subsequently went into administration itself early last week.

A total of 52 trade and expense creditors were owed a total of £1.47m by the company at the time of its liquidation, with banks owed £35,802.

The Peterlee, County Durham-based company had a turnover that was too low to require it to publish full accounts. It employed 23 people at the time it went under.

The goodwill of Intelligent Steel Solutions Ltd was bought by Intelligent Steel Ltd, with which it shares the same directors. Intelligent Steel Ltd was formerly registered at Companies House as BPHT Ltd.

The Intelligent Steel Solutions LinkedIn page has been renamed Intelligent Steel, and this week hosted  a company manager’s post about work it continues to undertake.

Intelligent Steel was contacted for comment by Construction News but had not responded before this article went live.

360 Insolvency is the administrator for both Intelligent Steel Solutions and Henley Construct. A statement from the insolvency practitioners said the latter firm had been working on five residential schemes for housing associations until recently.

“These contracts were priced before the pandemic and the shortage of building materials that led to rapidly increasing costs during the pandemic meant the contracts became uneconomic to fulfil,” 360 Insolvency added.

“Having been unable to renegotiate terms has left the directors with no choice but to appoint administrators.”

The insolvency specialists added that Henley Construct had ceased trading completely.

CN revealed in February that the majority of Henley Construct’s staff had been placed on unpaid leave.