The boss of stricken South West construction giant Midas Group Ltd has blamed the Covid pandemic for the firm’s collapse.
Staff at the Exeter-headquartered firm have been told by calls and emails that the business is going into administration and there would be job losses.
Work on several construction sites around the South West has ceased with immediate effect and, with the exception of a small number of people retained to assist the administrators, the group’s remaining 303 employees have been made redundant.
Steve Hindley, group chairman, put the blame on disruption and supply chain price hikes caused by the Covid pandemic, which, he said, caused contracts to be delayed or scrapped.
He said: “The disruption and supply chain inflation caused by the Covid-19 pandemic resulted in a number of critical contracts being postponed or cancelled.
“The resultant impact on the group’s working capital led to severe liquidity pressure and meant the group was no longer able to operate.”
Now Richard Hawes and Matt Smith, both senior managing Directors at global business advisory firm Teneo Financial Advisory Ltd have been appointed as joint administrators to Midas Group Limited and its subsidiaries: Midas Construction Ltd, Midas Retail Ltd, Mi-Space (UK) Ltd, Mi-Space Property Services Ltd, Midas Commercial Developments Ltd and Falmouth Developments Ltd.
Founded in Devon in 1976, the Midas Group is one of the UK’s largest independent construction and property services providers.
The group delivered a complete range of construction related services, from seven regional offices across the South West and Wales, across numerous sectors including residential, leisure, education, industrial and healthcare.
Midas was recently ranked as the ninth largest private sector firm in the South West, by the Western Morning News Annual Business Guide 2022, with a reported turnover of £291,267,008 and 498 employees.
But rumours have been circulating in recent weeks that the company was in financial trouble, after it announced a £2m loss in 2021 - its first deficit in 40 years of trading.
The company has offices in Indian Queens in Cornwall, Exeter, Newton Abbot, Bristol, Newport in South Wales, and Southampton.
It now seems certain that the company will be broken up with projects being completed by other companies.
Already, the developer behind Plymouth’s £22m Barne Barton rebuild has insisted it will go ahead without involvement from Midas - as it emerged the construction firm had already been dropped from the project.
London-based Clarion Housing Group said it will press ahead with the ambitious redevelopment of the former naval estate, and said it is close to appointing another contractor to carry out the work.
And following a sales process led by Deloitte and Teneo ahead of the administrators’ appointment, the administrators completed a sale of the Midas Group’s property services business to Bell Decorating Group Ltd, preserving 46 jobs.
Mr Hawes said: “We are pleased that we have been able to deliver a sale of the group’s property services division. However, this is a very challenging period for the group’s stakeholders, and in particular its employees and sub-contract supplier base. Our immediate focus is on ensuring the impact on employees, creditors and customers is minimised.”
Mr Hindley said: “It has been a great privilege to work with our many employees, suppliers and customers over the years and my heartfelt thanks goes to them for the tremendous support that they have given to the business.”
