Greenbatch Foundation is in voluntary administration after losing income due to events cancelled in Perth’s recent COVID-19 lockdown.
Greenbatch Foundation is in voluntary administration after losing income due to events cancelled in Perth’s recent COVID-19 lockdown.
But Business News understands entities Greenbatch Pty Ltd and Greenbatch Processing are unaffected.
The recycling education foundation appointed administrators Jeremy Nipps and Clifford Rocke from Cor Cordis on Saturday February 13.
Mr Nipps said two events were cancelled in the recent five-day snap lockdown, which prevented the foundation from collecting plastic bottles for Western Australia’s container deposit scheme, resulting in a lack of cash flow.
“Going forward, it’s [the cash flow is] going to impact the business and it’s operations so the directors took some steps to preserve their position with a view to put forward a restructuring plan that will allow the foundation to come out the other end in better shape,” Mr Nipps told Business News.
“The key thing is the underlying business is fine, the concept and what they are trying to implement makes sense, it’s just the difficulties in managing costs in the early stages as a start up and then the loss of events and COVID, that’s caused a bit of a ripple effect.
“Whatever money they would have been about to make or generate from those events in converting the containers into cash, then their ability to use those funds to pay the creditors that have accumulated.”
Mr Nipps said creditors were owed around $95,000.
He said creditor claims included Greenbatch Foundation’s landlord; the Australian Taxation Office; and Greenbatch’s founder and former director Darren Lomman.
Mr Lomman, a 2007 and 2014 40under40 winner, founded the organisation in 2017 and confirmed to Business News he resigned in December last year.
He did not give a reason for his departure but said he was still involved with Greenbatch Pty Ltd.
Greenbatch Foundation was a Business News Rising Stars winner in 2018.
The first meeting of the creditors will be held on February 25 at 10am.
