Around 140 jobs have been saved following a pre-pack deal to secure the future of Sheffield engineering business Linbrooke Services Ltd.
The rail and power infrastructure provider was established in 2002 and included three primary divisions – the railway construction business, which has been rescued, and power and optical businesses, which will close as part of of the deal.
The business called in business advisors from Quantuma amid a number of challenges faced by the railway construction sector, including delayed projects, as well as factors effecting the economy as a whole.
Quantuma’s Richard Easterby and Chris Newell were appointed as joint administrators on October 15, and struck a pre-pack deal to secure the sale of the railway construction business to Surrey based Keltbray. The firm employed nearly 200 people at the time of the administrators’ appointment and the deal sees around 140 staff transfer to new owners, construction engineering specialist Keltbray.
The company’s most recent accounts, filed in June and covering the year to March 2023, show its losses widened from £292,521 to £1.6m. The firm also had around 306 jobs during that financial year and bosses had highlighted accounts highlighted a strong pipeline in all of its key areas of operation, especially the rail division which had a projects pipeline “standing at close to £500m”.
However, the directors also highlighted a raft of challenges in the delivery climate “with major public sector clients facing increasing budget constraints”.
It added: “The ongoing pay and conditions dispute within the Rail sector has been deemed to have cost Network Rail around £1bn to date, manifesting itself in a slowdown in large scale infrastructure project investment in an effort to balance the books whilst the business’ major power customer continues to offset the impact of severe weather damage against long term investment in fault corrections.”
Richard Easterby, joint administrator and managing director at Quantuma, said: “I am delighted to have been able to achieve a sale of the company’s rail operation, in very time-pressured circumstances, which secures the long term viability of the business and a substantial amount of jobs.
“Unfortunately not all of the business could be rescued. For those members of staff whose roles were made redundant, the priority of my team and our advisors is to work with them to ensure that they have the information required to make timely claims from the redundancy payments office.”
Original artice – https://business-live.co.uk/all-about/yorkshire-humber
