For those who've been following the trials and travails of New Zealand's UBCO, you might recall that the company was placed into receivership in its home country back in January 2025. The year started off quite rough for the firm, though most of us in the motorcycle industry were admittedly more fixated on KTM's woes at the time.
The KTM situation has since come to some type of resolution, with the firm continuing to make motorcycles as it seeks to resolve its outstanding debts according to the new agreement reached. Although UBCO is a much smaller company, with far less reach than KTM, can things similarly turn around for the firm?
At the time of its receivership announcement, NZ-based firm Grant Thornton—which handles tax, insolvency, and other commercial concerns—determined that UBCO owed creditors around NZ $36M. For those in the US, that's around US $20.5 M at the time of writing. It's still a lot of money, but it's important to recognize that while both countries refer to our currency as dollars, the amount of debt is not quite at the level a US reader might understand it to be.
Unlike some of the other insolvency stories I've shared in the past, there aren't UBCO jobs or salaries on the line here. The firm let all 31 of its staff members go back in January, with full payment of wages owed. So that's not an issue to take into consideration here.
The receivers filed their first report on the receivership proceedings at the end of March 2025, and it makes a full accounting of where the company sits at this moment. It's an interesting read, as it indicates that UBCO is indeed still fighting for its life, even with the setbacks it's encountered.
For a start, NZ $255,000 was handed over to the receivers by UBCO's appointed Security Agent, in order to help do things like lease property so that UBCO might potentially be kept as a "going concern," in legal parlance. To that end, while several parties indicated interest in purchasing UBCO, only one has so far advanced to the sale process. The name of that party, however, has not been disclosed at this time.
So while it's clear that UBCO isn't out of the woods just yet, it also appears that we can't completely count it out, either. Having spent a few weeks experiencing the pretty no-nonsense little UBCO 2x2 a couple of years ago, I'm hopeful that it will find a new owner and once again get those bikes into the hands of riders.
