Waverley TBS collapsed leaving £64.5m in debts

Waverley TBS collapsed leaving  £64.5m in debts to unsecured creditors, with seven drinks companies owed seven-figure sums, a new report shows.

Diageo GB was the firm owed the single biggest amount - £6.1m - followed by Heineken UK (£4.3m), AB InBev (£3.5m) and Bacardi Brown-Forman Brands (£2.9m). In total £40.5m was owed to 196 trade creditors, the majority of which were drinks companies.

In addition, HM Revenue & Customs was owed £11.9m, including £6.1m in duty payments, £4.8m in VAT liability and £1.1m in PAYE and National Insurance Contributions.

Other trade creditors included Miller Brands UK (£1.7m) and Molson Coors UK (£1.1m). FE Barber, parent company of drinks suppliers Kingsland Wines & Spirits and Legacy Wines, was owed £1.3m.

Significant amounts were also owed to regional brewers and other drinks companies. Fuller’s was owed £213,920, Wells & Young’s £300,975 and Shepherd Neame £167,060.

Red Bull was owed £616,313, Magners GB £365,395, and SHS Group, the WKD producer, was owed £518,433.

Meanwhile, the report shows that the estimated total assets available for preferential creditors had a book value of £72.6m, although it estimates that just £9.7m of this will be realised.

The information is contained in a report filed at Companies House by Deloitte, which was appointed as administrator for the drinks logistics and wholesale business last month.

It had been reported that the business had a credit shortfall of £14m when it was placed in administration.

A total of 685 WaverleyTBS employees were made redundant days after the administrator was appointed after efforts to sell the business were scaled down.