Everton stadium cladders’ supply chain to lose 99.5% of money owed

Creditors in a collapsed envelope firm’s supply chain will get back up to half a penny in the pound at most, administrators have said.

Alucraft Systems was in the middle of installing cladding at Laing O’Rourke’s Everton Stadium (pictured) when it appointed administrators last March, making its 40 staff members redundant.

The Staffordshire-based firm’s parent company, TGCL 2024, went into liquidation four months later, hitting construction giant ISG for £13.9m.

Construction News revealed last year that ISG paid Alucraft £300,000 in March to keep the struggling firm afloat while it delivered facades on one of ISG’s projects in Maidenhead. Six months later, ISG itself went into administration.

Administrators at PwC have now revealed that Alucraft’s trade creditors are likely to receive at most £139,000 of the £27.8m they are owed.

Last September, administrators wrote that Alucraft had struggled with cashflow leading up to its administration, due to “challenging market conditions”. Directors had appealed to its majority shareholder, private equity firm Elaghmore, for a £5m short-term cash injection.

PwC was brought on to evaluate restructuring options in early 2023. Attempts to sell the firm struggled as existing contracts were “largely unprofitable to complete”, the administrators added.

The Bank of Ireland is likely to recover up to £620,000 of a joint overdraft facility it provided Alucraft, but Elaghmore is set to receive nothing of the £19.1m it lent.

Alucraft’s administration period has been extended to next March to resolve a claim from both creditors against £682,000 the firm held in cash.

At the time of its administration, Alucraft was part of Elaghmore-backed Clarison Group, which joined four facade and architectural glazing companies: Alucraft Systems, English Architectural Glazing (EAG), Alucraft (Ireland) and Williaam Cox.

Clarison Group renamed itself as TGCL 2024 around the time of Alucraft Systems’ administration, a few months before it entered liquidation.

An Elaghmore spokesperson said at the time the firm’s voluntary liquidation was part of an ongoing restructure that started after Alucraft Systems went under. The Clarison Group brand has been discontinued.

The spokesperson added: “The three remaining businesses which make up the group – Alucraft Ltd (Ireland), Williaam Cox Ltd (Ireland) and EAG Ltd (UK) – are all trading profitably and are not affected by this step.”