Jehu Group has ceased buying and selling after 87 years in enterprise, with 104 workers made redundant.
Administrators of the contractor, headquartered in Bridgend, Wales, have closed down its Jehu Group, Jehu Venture Companies and Waterstone Properties companies, and are getting ready to put them into administration.
Jehu specialised in building and improvement initiatives for registered social landlords and councils in Wales and the south-west of England.
Its newest accounts present it turned over £111.27m within the 18 months to 30 September 2020, making a £4.01m pre-tax loss. Within the 12 months to 31 March 2019, it made a pre-tax revenue of £1.15m on income of £51.7m.
Some 104 staff had been made redundant on Friday (21 October), with simply 5 being saved on to assist with the approaching administration course of.
In accordance with an announcement from insolvency specialist Begbies Traynor, Jehu Group had 17 stay contracts throughout its companies price a mixed worth of greater than £100m.
Present initiatives embrace two timber blocks of 4 and 7 storeys in Cardiff metropolis centre for housing affiliation Linc Cymru, a low-carbon housing scheme for Powys County Council in Clyro and 53 social properties for Vale of Glamorgan Council in Sully.
The enterprise was established in 1935 by Jack Jehu and has been run by his household ever since.
Insolvency practitioners mentioned that delivering fixed-price contracts with single digit margins agreed earlier than the pandemic had decimated the group’s money reserves.
Begbies Traynor managing accomplice in South Wales, Huw Powell, mentioned: “This case underlines the crushing influence of the present inflationary setting on a longtime and profitable enterprise.”
He mentioned the corporate held virtually £7m in internet belongings earlier than COVID-19 struck. “Nevertheless, delays in finishing initiatives attributable to the pandemic and subsequent price will increase triggered a extreme cashflow disaster that it couldn’t recuperate from, regardless of help from key stakeholders.”
He added: “We’re conscious of the unfavourable influence that this may have on the provision chain and hope that subcontractors will have the ability to work with the group’s prospects to seek out the very best options to finish present initiatives.
“From our interactions with workers while we now have offered recommendation to the group, it’s clear that they remained loyal to and had been proud to work for the enterprise. Staff are after all devastated by right now’s information, and I sincerely hope that their monitor file of delivering profitable initiatives will stand them in good stead to realize new employment rapidly.”
In a joint assertion firm administrators Marc Jehu and Simon Jehu mentioned: “It is a really devastating day for the enterprise began by our grandfather over 85 years in the past. Each potential choice to hold the enterprise alive has been utterly exhausted and it with desolate hearts that we discover ourselves with no alternative however to stop buying and selling.
“We did all the things potential to keep away from closure, however we had been preventing a battle that merely couldn’t be received as a result of successive financial shocks of the previous couple of years.”
They thanked workers for his or her service, and purchasers and provide chain companions for his or her help.
One brickwork subcontractor advised Building Information he was owed £67,000 by the corporate for 2 jobs.
“I believe it’s stunning to be sincere, I heard nothing from them however they hadn’t paid me. I went to their workplace to be advised the enterprise was shutting down and directors had been already there,” he mentioned.
The subcontractor mentioned that is the second comparable hit his enterprise has taken lately, as he beforehand carried out work for WRW Building, which collapsed in July 2021.