A HEALTHY noodles business which went into administration is thought to owe more than £3millon to creditors who are not expected to see any money.
Bournemouth-based Mr Lee’s Pure Foods went into administration in May after losing all the airline customers who accounted for 70 per cent of its revenue.
The company, which made Mr Lee’s Noodles, had been founded by Damien Lee, who died aged 54 in January 2021.
Administrators made all 10 staff redundant after attempts to sell the business as a going concern fell through. The statement of affairs provided to the administrators by the company’s directors said unsecured creditors were owed £3.16m and that the company’s assets totalled £61,320.
Most of the company’s debts were in unsecured loans, convertible loans and investment received in advance of share issues.
The debts included £1.2m to UK Future Fund, the government-backed support scheme for business, and six-figure sums to several investors.
Trade creditors were owed £136,619 and staff £43,820.
In previous reports, joint administrators James Saunders and Robert Armstrong of Kroll Advisory said the business had been “effectively” in “start-up phase” ever since its founding in 2016.
They wrote in their latest update: “The sales process for the assets of the company has now been concluded. The joint administrators have realised £25,795 in the administration.”
They added the company had no secured creditors and that “as anticipated, there are insufficient funds available” to pay any other creditors.
The business owned a US subsidiary, Mr Lee’s Pure Foods USA, Inc, which owed the parent company £1.54m, but it had proved impossible to sell the shares in the subsidiary, so no money could be recovered. An Australian subsidiary, Mr Lee’s Pure Foods Co Pty Limited, owed the parent company £1.35m and is being struck off with no money recovered.
The company’s assets were sold for a total of £15,000 to a new venture whose shareholders included former Mr Lee’s director Peter Tran and director Christopher Fung.
The purchase price included £11,450 for the business’s intellectual property, £2,249 for its sealing machine and £550 for cookbooks.
The company’s stock was a mix of finished products and raw materials, much of which had passed its “best before” dates, and the entire stock was ultimately abandoned despite being “extensively marketed”.
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