Forty-year-old Queensland food and travel group in administration

A decades-old Queensland business has collapsed, putting its large frozen and ethnic food business, international agri-commodity trading corporation and international travel agencies up for sale.

Richard Hughes and Neil Cussen of Deloitte were appointed receivers and managers of Parsram Group, Pars-Ram Brothers, and Ingwest and Airsonic Australia Travels at the start of the month.

Hughes tells SmartCompany the business had been hurt by the high Australian dollar, the Queensland floods, debt and internal management issues.

He says the company continues to trade and Deloitte has received interest from unnamed parties in similar fields. About 70 people are employed by the family business.

Deloitte says the international agri-commodity trading corporation, which specialises in de-skinned split chickpeas, turned over $43 million in 2010-11, and has a storage and processing plant in Brisbane and an established customer base across India, the Middle East, Europe and North America.

The frozen and ethnic food business turned over $14 million in the 2010-2011 financial year, Deloitte says, and has a packaging plant in Brisbane, distribution outlets in four capital cities and a domestic distribution network to 1,000 ethnic supermarkets

The travel business is smaller, with offices in Brisbane and Adelaide and combined commission revenue of $345,000 in the 2009-10 financial year, Deloitte says. It specialises in Indian travel.

Parsram has offices in Brisbane, Canada and India. On its website, Parsram dubs itself “an Australian company with global affiliations” and “offers end-to-end services in food production and manufacturing, distribution, travel, agri-commodities, importing and exporting, trading and logistics, and consumer research.”

The company was founded by Pars Ram Punj, and started out exporting pulses to the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East, the United Kingdom and North America. The business then diversified into food production and trading of other agri-commodities.

Pars Ram Brothers was formed in 1977 and became the first company to export chickpeas to India a year later. It now claims 22% market share of Australia’s chickpea industry, and has two grain-handling facilities in Brisbane and Narrabri.