Corbel in liquidation
Another big player in the building industry, Corbel Construction, has gone into liquidation.
Corbel, which was established in Christchurch in 2000, opened an Auckland office in 2015 and said it specialised in commercial and industrial projects.
It had upgraded four schools in Christchurch and has worked with district health boards in Auckland and Christchurch.
The Companies Office said Andrew Oorschot of Ashton Wheelans was appointed as liquidator on Monday, by resolution of shareholders.
Oorschot said it would take at least a week for him to come to grips with what creditors were owed, but he understood about 14 projects were involved, three of which were under way in Auckland.
The main security-holder is understood to be one of the main banks.
Corbel employed about a dozen people but worked mostly with subcontractors, Oorschot said.
Corbel Construction’s website, Facebook and LinkedIn pages have been taken down.
A picture is emerging of a company that has been retrenching for nearly two years, including the departure in October of chief executive Ross Meikle. Meikle is a pre-construction manager at Decmil, and declined to comment on Corbel’s collapse.
Last year Corbel said it had signed $35 million worth of new projects in Auckland. At the time Kevin Burke, Corbel’s Auckland general manager, said Auckland would contribute about 30 per cent of the company’s targeted annual revenue of more than $50m in its first full year of operations.
Corbel’s Auckland office in Grey Lynn is vacant. A worker at a neighbouring business said the office had sat empty for about two months and Corbel had only been a tenant in the building for about 18 months.
The company is majority owned by managing director Craig Jones, Jane Madison-Jones, and Mark and Rachel Wells.
Craig Jones and Mark Wells are the only two directors.
John Bishop, a chartered member of the Institute of Directors, was a director of Corbel Construction from July 2016 to May 2017.
At the time of Bishop’s appointment, Jones said that in the two years leading up to Bishop’s appointment Corbel had undergone considerable growth, moving from being a midsized Christchurch company to having a national presence.
Since opening an Auckland office in 2015, Corbel had signed $30m of new projects with the Ministry of Education, the Auckland Council and the Auckland DHB.
At the time, Jones said Corbel had averaged more than 25 per cent growth per year over the previous eight years, with targeted annual revenue of more than $50m.
When Corbel expanded to Auckland it had a goal to become a $100m national contractor by 2018.
Before it was taken down, the company’s website stated that it had ‘‘adopted a strategy of narrowing our focus to key customers’’.
‘‘This focus has also meant not only an increase in the size and sophistication of projects we undertake, but also a heavy focus on process and management systems essential to ensure delivery for such customers across a range of construction projects,’’ its website said.
‘‘This strategy has produced an enviable group of key customers that we work with regularly including the Ministry of Education, Christchurch City Council, Canterbury District Health Board and Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology.’’
In recent years Corbel has had a succession of senior managers including ex-EQC customer services manager Bruce Emson in July 2014. He left six months later to take up a job at MainPower before stepping down in August 2017.