Sarah O’Toole and Jason Bell of Grant Thornton UK were appointed joint administrators to eight companies within the Pochin group on 5th August 2019
The administrators said: "In the past year the construction business, with a new management team on board, had established a platform for growth, developed excellent client relationships and secured a pipeline of profitable new work and opportunities. However, despite that renewed optimism for the future, the legacy issues from earlier contracts became too great a burden leading to difficult trading conditions.
"The group’s board explored a number of options in an effort to preserve the group’s trading status over recent months, including injections of significant levels of capital from shareholders and the sale of the group’s property portfolio.
"Despite these efforts, the impact of the challenges have proven insurmountable and the difficult decision was reached by the directors to place a number of entities in the group into administration. This includes the main trading entities of Pochin’s Ltd, Pochin Construction Ltd and six other subsidiaries."
The future of the 120 employees remains uncertain. Sarah O’Toole added: “Whilst it is very early days, this may result in a number of redundancies and the companies ceasing to trade. The joint administrators will continue to review options to ensure the best possible outcome for creditors.”
Live projects include a £20m Hilton Garden Inn hotel as part of Stoke-on-Trent’s Smithfield development and a £16m care village in Birkdale for Belong, both of which have topped out in recent weeks.
In 2014 Pochin’s de-listed from the London Stock Exchange and the original founding family took back control, led by Jim Nicholson and his mother Sylvia, whose father Cedric Pochin set up the company in the 1930s.
In the year to February 2018 Pochin’s Limited made a pre-tax loss of £3.4m on revenue of £59m. That loss was attributed to a residential construction contract causing problems.
Last year ultimate ownership of the company was transferred to Jersey.
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