Scottish bread supplier Walls Bakery Limited, trading as Waas Bakery, has gone into administration after being hit by ongoing cost pressures.
The Shetland-based business was founded in 2003 and produced a range of baked goods, including bread loaves, rolls, pastries, cakes, and pancakes for local cafes, shops, and a supermarket. The bakery operation and property were purchased by the present owner in 2016.
It experienced ‘challenging trading conditions’ during the Covid-19 lockdowns which, together with ongoing cost pressures and lack of investment capital, resulted in cashflow pressures.
Attempts to find a buyer for the business failed and Geoff Jacobs and Blair Nimmo of Interpath Advisory were appointed to Walls Bakery and Saltness (which owns the property from which the bakery trades) on 19 April 2023.
As a result, the bakery ceased trading immediately and the nine employees within the bakery operation were made redundant, Interpath said.
“Clearly this is disappointing news for this well-known local business, not least for the company’s dedicated employees,” said chief executive of Interpath Advisory and joint administrator Blair Nimmo.
The Interpath team will work with staff to claim their statutory entitlements from the Redundancy Payments Office and also ensure the “optimum” outcome for creditors, Nimmo added.
“We would advise that any parties who have an interest in the bakery operation or the property contact the joint administrators in early course as there remains an opportunity to acquire this well-established local business, Jacobs, managing director at Interpath Advisory, added.
The news comes just over a month after fellow Scottish bakery Mortons Rolls ‘ceased trading’. However, the business was reopened under new ownership a couple of weeks later as a consortium of investors entered negotiations with HMRC, administrators and the Scottish government to take ownership and control of the company’s assets.
No comments yet