Despite initial interest from over 50 companies, receiver Grant Thornton (www.grant-thornton.co.uk) has failed to find a buyer for Stadium Plastics (Hartlepool / UK; www.stadiumplastics.co.uk) and the business is now being wound-down with a view to being closed in February or March 2008. Over 300 jobs will be lost. The receiver said the business was undercapitalised and not generating sufficient profit to invest in new equipment in order to reduce its cost of production.

Stadium went into receivership on 12 October 2007 (see Plasteurope.com of 26.10.2007) but it continued to supply injection moulded components to the automotive industry whilst a buyer was sought. This, according to the receiver, was more dependent on a purchaser gaining the confidence of the customers by demonstrating sector experience and attractive future pricing policies than negotiating a price for the assets.

However, once customers decided to relocate their tooling, Stadium’s business had no value to interested parties other than as an injection moulding facility and no offers were received. In 2006 Stadium made a loss of GBP 256,000 (EUR 359,000) on a turnover of GBP 31m (EUR 43m).