The company’s plant machinery will be offloaded at an auction managed by CJM Asset Management on June 2 that was attracting “international interest”, according to Sarah Burge, director of Kingsbridge Corporate Solutions.
Burge, the administrator winding up the business, said a loss of customers and a lack of key strategic raw materials had hit turnover, leaving the business unsustainable.
Paul Cooper, director of CJM, said: “Following the closure of the factory we have moved the production lines, refrigeration plant, machinery and other equipment to our auction centre in Scunthorpe in preparation for the disposal.
‘Expensive kit’
“Mariner Foods took over and equipped the factory in June 2012, so everything is post that date and quite a lot of it is considerably newer than that. Food industry processing equipment has, necessarily, to be of a very high standard, which means that it tends to be remarkably expensive kit.
“One of the star lots in the auction for example is a specialist packaging machine that cost in excess of £50,000 when it was bought less than 18 months ago. That is just one lot. We reckon that in total we’re looking at equipment that cost in excess of a quarter of a million pounds.”
As food processing was a major industry in the Humber area, Cooper said he expected a lot of interest in the auction from local and overseas firms.
“Holland has a large frozen food industry and we have sold a lot of this type of equipment to Dutch end-users. We have been making them aware of what’s happening and I have no doubts that they will be amongst the people taking a look at what is on offer.”