ROBERTS Bakery went bust owing £140,405 to local traders, and it is unlikely they will ever see more than fraction of it.
Nearly all the money raised from the £21.6 million sale of Frank Roberts & Sons' remaining assets, announced on Tuesday, October 14, will go to its secured creditors, which include American bank, Wells Fargo, and HMRC, for unpaid tax.
Local businesses owed the most money include an independent Northwich scaffolding firm, owed £52,938, and a HGV dealer in Lostock Gralam, owed £63,772.
Another 12 Northwich, Middlewich, and Knutsford traders appear on Roberts' list of unsecured creditors, all last in the queue for getting their money regardless of their size or the impact this will have on them.
Under British company law, this even includes its employees in respect of their statutory redundancy payments.
Other debts to local traders range from £78 to a mechanic in Lostock Gralam, and £7,547 to a Middlewich bus and coach hire firm.
Other businesses owed money include several logistics firms, a driver training business, an IT services provider, a bakery consultant, a windscreen repair business, and a breakdown recovery firm.
According to PwC, these are likely to get between just one and four per cent of the total debt owed to them.
This is on top of the £2.2 million owed to 93 employees in lost wages, holiday and notice pay, and redundancy payments, 86 of which worked at its Rudheath bread factory.
Just £87,000 is owed to the workers as preferential creditors, meaning PwC will strive to make good the debt within six months out of what remains of the company's assets.
For the outstanding amount, PwC has instructed these workers to apply to the government for what they are owed via the publicly-funded Redundancy Payments Service.
PwC has also revealed Frank Roberts & Sons owed a vast debt to its final salary pension fund, administered by Verity Trustees, of between £14.2 million and £15.6 million.
The sum relates to a loan agreement dated September 13, 2022.
The pension fund is a secured creditor like Wells Fargo and HMRC but, while the debt is not likely to be repaid in full, PwC forecasts 89 and 98 per cent of the balance will be made good within nine to 12 months.
Before Frank Roberts & Sons went into administration, its assets, including property, plant equipment, stock, and book debts (money owed to Roberts for those it has supplied) were sold to Boparan Private Office, owned by food processing billionaire, Ranjit Singh Boparan.
Mr Boparan is the founder of 2 Sisters Food Group, which began as a frozen poultry cutting and packaging firm in West Bromwich, and is now valued at more than £1 billion.
BPO paid £21.6 million for Roberts' assets in a move which it says secured 433 jobs for Cheshire workers.
The total amount owed to Frank Roberts & Sons' 300 or more unsecured creditors up and down the country is £15.5 million.
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