Two hundred people have been made redundant after a food firm has gone into administration.
Administrators have been called into QV Realisations Ltd, formerly known as A H Worth Ltd, yesterday (Monday, June 10) which has affected the fresh and prepared operations at Holbeach.
This website has been told that many employees of the potato packer and processor learned that they were losing their jobs during an online teams meeting yesterday afternoon.
The company has suffered significant losses in its last two years of trading, due to the combination of volatile potato prices and increased operating costs that were not fully recovered in its selling prices.
Whilst efforts were made to find a buyer for the business, unfortunately no funded, deliverable offers were received and the company ceased to trade on yesterday.
Paul Meadows and Matt Cowlishaw of Teneo Financial Advisory Limited are acting as administrators
Mr Meadows said: “Regrettably, the closure of the company has led to around 200 redundancies, with a skeleton team retained to support the administrators in the wind down of operations. Teneo’s specialist employee advisory team will work closely with the governments Redundancy Payments Service, Job Centre Plus and any local employers who are advertising vacancies in order to provide support to all those made redundant.”
“The company is a member of the AH Worth & Company group of companies and the group had provided considerable support over recent years. All other companies in the group are profitable with strong balance sheets, and continue to trade as normal.”
While job losses have been announced at the Holbeach sites, the firm says its operations in Fosdyke and all its farms businesses are profitable and continue to trade as normal.
Chief executive Duncan Worth said: “This is a very sad day for our business and especially all our colleagues affected at Holbeach. This is not a decision that we have taken lightly and one we only took after exploring all other possible options.
“Our remaining businesses across Fosdyke and the Farms, are profitable and with continued focus and the support of the Worth family, we are confident that we will continue to build a strong and successful future for A H Worth Group. We have an excellent portfolio of products, with end-to-end supply chains. This will continue to deliver a unique offering for our core customers.”
“As we have always done, we will continue to work with our customers to look at how we can develop, grow and invest in our business for the years to come.”