Construction company with $17 million turnover collapses

A Victorian construction contractor which has been in business since 2002 has been placed in voluntary administration.

Remedial Concrete Works provided specialist design and support contract services to construction projects around Australia.

But the business has ceased trading and Laurie Fitzgerald and Stephen Dixon of Grant Thornton were appointed as administrators on Monday.

Fitzgerald told SmartCompany Remedial Concrete Works had a turnover of $17 million a year and at its peak it was employing about 70 people. 

Most of these staff were let go before the administrators were appointed.

“[Remedial Concrete Works] got into some contractual problems on some major projects in the last nine months which caused it to sustain some heavy losses,” Fitzgerald says.

“Because it’s a contracting company, it works with skinny margins.”

Creditors are owed around $4.5 million with the Australian Tax Office a key creditor.

“We are looking to recover what we can in the way of assets in the company,” Fitzgerald says.

“It has a significant number of projects with outstanding guarantees on so we are trying to get those guarantees returned and determine who the creditors are.”

Fitzgerald says while it is “early days still”, the administrators are confident most employees have got their pay and are now just working out the details owed for superannuation. 

A first meeting of creditors will be held on March 27 in Melbourne.