North East vegan ice cream firm Beau’s Ice Cream Parlour Ltd collapsed owing creditors more than £300,000, documents have revealed.
Beau’s Ice Cream Parlour Ltd, based in Peterlee, has been liquidated after falling into cash flow struggles following the pandemic. The collapse came less than two years after the businesses secured a £400,000 investment to fuel expansion. The business was launched in 2017 by Joseph Eyre and Amber Fox-Eyre in Peterlee, County Durham, producing plant-based ice cream they said tastes better than dairy-based alternatives.
The firm’s gelato, which received multiple Great Taste Awards, contained only natural, whole-food ingredients had flavours including raspberry, ice cream cup cake, pistachio and coffee crafted with no artificial flavours. In April 2021 the firm secured £400,000 in funding from a group of investors including the TRICAP Group and venture capital firms Dismatrix and Northstar Ventures Limited, with funding from the North East Innovation Fund.
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But the company – which traded as Beau’s Ice Cream and Beau’s Gelato – called in FRP Advisory to wind-up the company in January. A statement of the company’s affairs show it owed unsecured non-preferential claims £257,696, including £145,811 to unsecured creditors, £10,000 to HMRC for employer NI contributions, and £27,500 to each of the firm’s founders. The firm had assets of almost £20,000 available for preferential creditors, which included employee claims for pay arrears and holidays and pension contributions but the estimated total deficiency when it was put into liquidation was £794,446.82.
A separate list of 37 company creditors, which includes £90,000 owed to HMRC, shows they are collectively owed £304, 811.34. Another list of the company’s shareholders shows that VBites Ventures Ltd, owned by vegan food entrepreneur Heather Mills, was the major shareholder with 4,571 shares, closely followed by the founders Joseph Eyre and Amber Fox-Eyre with 4,381 apiece.
FRP Advisory’s Andrew Haslam and Antonya Allison were appointed as liquidators to wind-up the business on January 19, and to sell off parts of the business. Two separate parties have bought its assets, with one unnamed party buying the plant and machinery and physical assets. The other business, Gelatissimo Ltd, of which Beau’s Gelato founder Joseph Eyre became a director last week, bought the company’s intellectual property, including its social media platforms and the Beau’s Gelato website.
An FRP Advisory spokesman said: “FRP was appointed on January 19 and instructed to start a sale process, and the assets have been been realised.”
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