The lights have fused for Christmas illuminations specialists Fuzzwire which has gone into administration placing almost 200 full and part-time jobs at risk.
Andrew Sheridan and Phil Pierce, partners at FRP Advisory, have been appointed joint administrators to Fuzzwire, which is headquartered in Keighley, West Yorkshire with another main storage depot at Leeds Bradford airport.
The company was one of the UK's leading design, manufacture and installers of Christmas scheme decoration displays at around 150 major UK shopping centres, including Canary Wharf and Westfield London, Bluewater in Kent, Lakeside in Essex, Metrocentre in Gateshead, Arndale in Manchester, and Cribbs Causeway in Bristol.
Prior to entering into administration Fuzzwire employed 65 full-time employees, 44 part-time workers and 78 self-employed sub-contractors.
All of Fuzzwire's contracts around the UK have been assigned to MK Illumination, part of an Austrian-owned group with operations across Europe.
Andrew Sheridan, partner at FRP Advisory, said: 'The assignment of Fuzzwire's contracts should ensure the safeguarding and sound management of the Christmas decoration schemes that are in place, and ensure there is a smooth operational framework to facilitate their seamless removal to timetable by MK Illumination in the New Year, critical for the shopping centre customers. It should also ensure that there is a continuing relationship for reinstallation of decoration schemes at a range of shopping malls at future seasonal periods in 2014 and beyond.'
The administrators said Fuzzwire had suffered over the past few weeks from a sharp deterioration in its financial position which put unsustainable pressure on its cash flow. Despite efforts to attract external investment or to sell the business as a going concern, no buyer emerged, resulting in the company's former management being forced to lay off all staff during December.
Sheridan said: 'It goes without saying that we have huge sympathy for the former employees who have not been paid in December, particularly as we are in the run up to Christmas. As joint administrators we have a duty to all creditors and our immediate focus will be to assist the former employees in processing their claims which will in turn be submitted to the Redundancy Payments Service (RPS), although we recognise it will probably take approximately six to eight weeks before they receive any of their entitlements from RPS.
