Administrators appointed to Solihull construction firm Greswolde

Published by

Peter Davison

Solihull-based Greswolde Construction Limited has gone into administration just a year after changing ownership.

Quantuma Advisory Limited were appointed as joint administrators of the firm on August 10.

Established in 1983, and headquartered in Solihull, Greswolde specialised in new build, design and build, refurbishments and fit-outs.

The company’s latest accounts reported a turnover of £19.4m. The business employed 24 people, whose jobs are affected.

Quantuma Advisory Limited's managing director and joint administrator, Nick Simmonds said: “Along with many other businesses in the construction sector, Greswolde has experienced unprecedented trading conditions over the last couple of years as a direct result of the global pandemic.

"Its customers have been substantially disrupted by unpredictable economic conditions and the business has experienced severe supply chain challenges.

"Having exhausted all options for the business, it is with deep regret that this business is no longer able to continue to trade and has ceased to operate with immediate effect.”

“Our immediate priorities are to provide the support required by employees to enable them to make any necessary redundancy claims, and to work with the management team and their clients to affect an orderly handover of incomplete projects in order to attempt to allow them to be progressed and completed by industry peers.”

“Our role as administrators will be to maximise recoveries and realisations to make a distribution to Greswolde’s secured or preferential creditors.”

Just last year construction engineer Perry Stewart and chartered accountant Shaun Walsh invested in the business and took directorships, with Malcolm Priest who purchased Greswolde Construction Ltd in 1995, retiring and construction director Chris Harrison continuing in his role.

Pictured last year: Malcolm Priest, William Senior of corporate finance specialists Watersheds, who led the deal, Perry Stewart and Shaun Walsh

Peter Davison

Peter Davison is deputy editor of The Business Magazine. He has spent his life in journalism – doing work experience in newsrooms in and around Bristol while still at school, and landing his first job on a local newspaper aged 19. By 28 he was the youngest newspaper editor in the country. An early advocate of online news, he spent the first years of the 2000s telling his bosses that the internet posed both the biggest opportunity and greatest threat to the newspaper industry and the art of journalism. He was right on both counts. Since 2006 he has enjoyed a career as a freelance journalist. He lives in rural Wiltshire with one wife, two children, and three cats.