A County Durham cladding firm has gone into administration and ceased trading, with an undisclosed number of job losses.
Aluminium cladding specialist Pressed Steel Products Group Ltd (PSP Group) called in administrators from Interpath Advisory after an unsuccessful attempt to refinance the business.
PSP Group invested in new manufacturing technology just as demand for cladding dropped, Interpath said in a statement.
Interpath added that it hopes to find a buyer for the firm but an unspecified number of redundancies have already been made from the workforce.
PSP Group has three registered firms that are also in administration: PSP Architectural Ltd, PSP Aluminium Ltd, and Pressed Steel Products Ltd.
The first two firms were the main trading companies, specialising in manufacturing aluminium facades, cladding and door and window frames.
Recent jobs included supplying a substructure and architectural features for the Anne McLaren Building at the Cambridge Biomedical Campus.
Pressed Steel Products owned the two freehold properties that were the manufacturing sites.
James Lumb and James Clark of Interpath were appointed joint administrators on 20 September.
Lumb, managing director at Interpath, said: “The challenges facing the construction sector in the UK are widespread. In particular, we are seeing issues in building products where – even with positive sentiment in end user markets such as housing around government policy and reducing interest rates – there is a long lag to sales. That is exactly what happened with PSP.
“The business had invested heavily in state-of-the-art equipment and IT solutions but was unable to withstand soft demand in the short-term. We are seeking buyers for the business and any interested parties should contact us as soon as possible.”
The most recent full-year accounts for PSP Aluminium, covering the 2022 calendar year, showed the firm had net assets of £504,000. It employed a monthly average of 21 staff and owed £60,700 in bank loans repayable within 12 months.
For the same period, PSP Architectural reported net assets of £854,000 with a monthly average of 65 employees. It held £180,000 of bank debt repayable within one year.
Lumb said: “We have a team supporting employees impacted by the appointment [of administrators] and will work with them to make representations to the Redundancy Payments Service.”
