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500 jobs lost as furnishings firm faces final curtain

More than 500 jobs have been lost following the collapse of Cheshire curtain company Montgomery Tomlinson. Based at Bretton near Chester, the company made and supplied curtains and other accessories. In the year to the end of December 2011 sales fell to £20.1m, down from £23.2m the previous year.

The administrator KPMG has been appointed after efforts to find a buyer failed, and the company ran out of funds. KPMG said 146 people had been made redundant at the Bretton factory and 384 people working in retail concessions nationwide. Will Wright, Paul Flint and Brian Green of KPMG’s restructuring team have been appointed joint administrators.

The business has ceased to trade and 530 employees across its 123 department store and retail concessions, and its factory and warehouse facility in Bretton, have been made redundant.

Employee salaries for this month will not be paid due to insufficient funds. Staff will be helped to make claims to the Redundancy Payments Office for the amounts owed.

Will Wright said: “Despite the tireless efforts of the directors to secure a sale of, or investment in the business over the last four weeks, it has been impossible to find a workable solution to enable the company to continue to trade and they have made the difficult decision to appoint administrators.

“As a result of an increasingly competitive marketplace, a fall in sales left Montgomery Tomlinson critically short of cash and unable to meet its liabilities.

“Given the cash position of the business, unfortunately there are insufficient funds to make payments for August salaries and we will be working as hard as possible to assist employees in their claims to the Redundancy Payments Office.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Simon Malia .