Hewden is estimated to have collapsed with crippling debts of up to £240m with banks and unsecured creditors.
Construction Enquirer reports, administrators from Ernst & Young have released the first breakdown of the plant hirer’s financial position following its collapse in November.
The £84m turnover plant hirer is estimated to have assets worth nearly £100m, but all of this will be swallowed paying secured bank creditors much of the £150m they are owed.
A pre-pack deal with A-Plant to buy the powered access, power generation fleet and Interlift materials handling business raised £29m.
Since then Morris Leslie, JK Ashbrook, Gap Group and Nixon Hire have together bought a further eight depots and plant raising a further £29m.
- UK Plant Hire firms are snapping up Ex-Hewden machinery equipment depot locations
- 127 Hewden Cranes & Lifts going to Euro Auctions after collapse
- A-Plant acquires three divisions of Hewden for £29m as rental giant goes into administration
- Is ‘Brexit really to blame’ as UK machinery rental firm Hewden nears collapse??
- £11.5m investment for UK crane hire firm Hewden in Tadano cranes
- 30 new Terex Genie GTH-2506 compact Telehandlers for Hewden UK
On top of this Ernst and Young hopes to raise a further £50m selling Hewden’s 137-crane fleet and remaining construction plant in auction over the next four months.
But they have warned there is little prospect of unsecured creditors seeing the cash they are owed.
The rest of the unsecured debts cover intercompany loans, taxes owed to HMRC as well as a £46m shortfall in the company pension fund.
Trade creditors are out of pocket to the tune of £22.5m. Out of this mobile crane supplier Tadano is owed £7.4m and tower lighting specialists Generac Mobile Products UK and Trime UK are owed £3.2m and £1m respectively. Gunn JCB and Finning are each owed around £500,000.
Written by Aaron Morby
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