Lead polymer training body put into administration
3 Nov 2009
Telford, UK - Polymer Training Ltd, the leading training centre for the UK plastics industry has been placed into administration by its parent company Next-tec Holdings Ltd (NTHL). The company acquired the Telford-based business two years ago from vocational training charity Polymer Industrial Educational Training Trust (PIETT), which at a time was seeking to place PTL into liquidation.
In a statement, explaining his decision to call in the administrators, NTHL chief executive
We had been interested in the purchase of PTL for sometime prior to the actual purchase. We finally stepped in when in September of 2007 PIETT let it be known that it was their intention to place PTL into liquidation within the month. The purchase was to be a two-part transaction which was the purchase of PTL, the business and the purchase of the freehold assets of PIETT relating to the site at Halesfield 7 in
Unfortunately it turned out that when the Polymer Training Board was privatised in the Thatcher era there had been no change of ownership of the land registry since the premises had been built. It was therefore not possible to execute the purchase of the premises as part of the transaction on the same day as was the intention. It was PIETT’s view that they could not delay the sale of the business until the title on the property had been properly formalised. So we proceeded with the purchase of PTL whilst entering into a rental agreement which gave us sufficient time to achieve clean title and purchase the property.
In negotiations with PIETT it had been agreed that on completion of the property purchase they would continue to provide financial support for the first three years from the proceeds of the sale to compensate NTHL for taking over the business that had consistently been losing £350k per annum over the previous years. In February of 2008 we called the option to purchase the freehold but were told that the understanding we had had about the ongoing financial support could not be honoured because the ITB Pension Fund had intervened and was claiming all the funds from the proceeds of sale.
That then lead to the Pension Fund expelling PIETT as a member and trying to claim the assets pushing PIETT into liquidation and resulting in the loss of membership of the Pension Fund for the staff of PTL.
The staff that were members of the Pension Fund have registered a complaint to the regulatory body which is now going through that process. However, in May of this year we made an offer to the liquidator of PIETT which at the meeting we were told was acceptable and could be recommended to the other creditors but would be subject to the withdrawal of the complaint to the Pension Regulator which we were not in a position to do.
This two year battle has cost NTHL substantial sums of money and we have registered a claim against the PIETT assets of some £800k.
The trading year 2008 was a very good year for PTL. If we take out the extraordinary expenses of legal fees and other expenses that have been incurred in this dispute which are close to £400k we had turned in a fourteen month period the £335k loss of the previous year into one of £47k loss.
However, after the turn of the year the turnover in PTL plummeted by more than 50%. This was due to the effects of the depression, that the development funds that we had in place had been dissipated by the ongoing dispute and the cut back in training expenditure from the government and industry.
Given the above we felt that we had to seek the protection of the courts. PTL is a victim of the collateral damage that is the result of this dispute between the pension fund and PIETT.
The staff at PTL have been outstanding in their support and NTHL are now intending to trade the business forward to complete what courses we can. It should also be said that the tenants that run business from this site are not affected by these problems and will be continuing to trade in the normal way.
