News

The boss of Bulmers Transport has revealed more details about the financial position of his old company – Bulmers Logistics – which went into administration last month.

Johnathan Bulmer, managing director of Bulmers Transport, who acquired the trade and assets of Bulmers Logistics for an undisclosed sum after it entered a pre-pack administration on 21 January , says the debt of the old company was part of a pre-agreed facility and made up of:

• £3m-worth of hire-purchase agreements with Yorkshire Bank on 56 trucks. Bulmer says these agreements have been moved across to Bulmers Transport and will be honoured by the new business.
• £6.2m of invoice-finance debt. Bulmer explains that this is 85% of the actual and legitimate book debt at the time Bulmers Logistics ceased trading, and is fully recoverable. He adds that the vast majority of this debt on the sales ledger was "completely normal debt within standard trading terms", and that he is fully committed to recovering this as part of the agreement with administrator Deloitte. He adds that "a significant proportion" has already been paid.
• An overdraft  facility of £500,000. Bulmer says he expects this to be repaid from the 15% balance of recovered trading debt and the invoice-finance debt.

Bulmers Transport is closing offices in Hull and Immingham, making about 50 staff redundant. The firm is also reducing its fleet of vehicles by 40 to 144.

However, 200 retained staff will transfer across to the new company under TUPE regulations.

Bulmer says: "We are pleased that we have received tremendous support from the majority of our customers and suppliers, our staff are fully behind the new business, and everything is going well so far. We intend to keep it that way."