Member Article

Two Rotherham waste firms fall into administration with combined debts of £8 million

Two Rotherham-based waste and recycling firms have fallen into administration with combined debts of more than £8 million.

According to letsrecycle.com. Howard Smith and Jonny Marston of KPMG were appointed joint administrators of Leeds Recycling Limited and Waste Recycling and Diversion (WRD) Limited

The majority of the 112 staff, 48 workers at Leeds Recycling Ltd and 64 at WRD, were made redundant on appointment of the administrators.

Leeds Recycling provided waste collection to local businesses, but it had experienced ‘disproportionate operating costs on its customer collections business and an inability to attract new customers in the local South Yorkshire area’, resulting in the firm incurring ‘substantial losses’ since it commenced trading in April 2013, according to a KPMG report.

KPMG claims that in an attempt to reduce operating costs prior to the appointment of administrators, Leeds Recycling Ltd sold its collections business in September 2014 to Biffa Waste Services.

Leeds Recycling owes £2,575,714 to creditors, £871,207.08 of which is owed to company director Andrew McGee.

WRD was incorporated in March 2008 and began trading in March 2013 to process recycling for local authorities. It now owes £5,670,809 to creditors, of which £3,846,306 is owed to company director Mr McGee.

In a statement issued upon the firm falling into administration, Howard Smith, associate restructuring partner at KPMG, said: “The companies experienced significant cash flow difficulties in recent months and were unable to meet their financial commitments.

“We have staff on site to assist employees with submitting their claims to the Redundancy Payments Office and to help with any queries.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Clare Burnett .