A North Yorkshire supplier of pipeline maintenance services to the global oil and gas sector has fallen into administration with the loss of 83 jobs.
Administrators from Kroll were appointed to Catterick-based Pipeline Engineering & Supply Co. Limited after its parent company Circor International Ltd failed to find a buyer for the business, which it says had seen "accounting irregularities".
Circor announced it wanted to exit the Pipeline Engineering & Supply Co business in March after finding the irregularities - which it said appeared to account for balance sheet and income statement entries in the range of £26.7m ($35m) to £34.3m ($45m) of pre-tax income on a cumulative basis over a period of at least five years.
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A review of the irregularities had been carried out by an outside law firm and a forensic accounting firm with oversight from the New York Stock Exchange-listed firm's audit committee. The administration does not impact the remainder of Circor's operations in the UK.
Pipeline Engineering - described as a "world leader in the design, manufacture and testing of pipeline pigging and flow assurance products" - had been trading for more than 50 years and had operations in Aberdeen and Dubai.
Jimmy Saunders, joint administrator at Kroll, said: “The business was loss making as its cost base and infrastructure were not aligned to revenues.
"The group has made substantial investment into the company but together with the current economic uncertainty and cost inflation in manufacturing the group was unfortunately unable to continue to provide financial support.”
Pipeline Engineering accounted for about 3% of Circor's revenue in 2020 and has ceased trading with immediate effect, and the administrators said they were providing support to affected employees.
The latest set of accounts for Pipeline Engineering at Companies House show it made a pre-tax loss of £2m in 2019, on turnover of £16.5m.
