LIQUIDATORS for a shop which sold Apple products until it closed without warning three years ago have paid unsecured creditors a small fraction of the nearly £1million they were owed.

Solutions Inc, an authorised re-seller of Apple devices with a shop in Old Christchurch Road, Bournemouth, shut suddenly in February 2019.

Staff were informed by email on a Monday evening that the business had ceased to trade. They were told not to come to work and warned that the police would be called if they tried to get into the stores – despite some having belongings inside.

The Bournemouth shop was one of six authorised Apple re-sellers run by Solutions Inc, based in Hove. All 53 staff were made redundant.

In their latest report to creditors, liquidators Colin Vickers and Christopher Stevens said claims for £2,581 from the staff and £32,602 from the Redundancy Payments Service were settled in full in September 2020.

They added: “We have received claims totalling £910,667.30 from unsecured creditors in these proceedings.

“Claims received have been agreed and a dividend of 7.14 pence in the pound was declared to unsecured creditors on February 19, 2021.

“A second and final dividend of 0.91 pence in the pound was declared to unsecured creditors on January 19, 2022.

“Pursuant to the insolvency rules, no further dividend will be declared to preferential and unsecured creditors as the funds realised have already been distributed or used or allocated for paying the expense of the insolvency proceedings.”

In its final set of accounts, for the year ending in June 2017, the company reported a 60 per cent rise in the sale of iPhones but drops of 16.8 per cent in iPad sales and 10.7 per cent for computers.

“Gross profit was down eight per cent due to iPhones being at a lower margin than other Apple products and Apple reducing our margin on products part way through the year,” director Aiden Bowen wrote.

The business depended on the tech giant’s devices for 84 per cent of its turnover.

“The retail environment in general has gone through difficult times recently. There has been a rise in online sales of the products we sell in our stores. These are often at a discount from the retail price. However the sale of Apple products overall have been on the increase,” Mr Bowen reported then.

The business was planning an online store and was expecting a new deal from Apple to give it a better profit margin.

It was also planning to move the Bournemouth store in a bid to make it more profitable.