The administrators of mining and construction contractor Henry Walker Eltin have pledged to stabilise the business ahead of the first creditors’ meeting next week.
The job of running the business was handed to specialist insolvency firm McGrathNicol & Partners on Tuesday, just one day after Ernst & Young had been appointed voluntary administrators.
EY resigned after becoming aware of a “potential conflict of interest”. Industry sources said it was likely HWE would be broken up and sold to competing firms unless the administrators were able to recapitalise the company. In the short term, work is expected to continue at its main projects.
In Western Australia it provides contract mining services at three of BHP Billiton’s iron ore mines in the Pilbara and at Portman’s Cockatoo Island (which it half owns) and Koolyanobbing iron ore mines.
In the civil engineering field it has an alliance with Clough and Maunsell to build an extension of the Roe Highway for Main Roads.
The depth of HWE’s problems became apparent last October when it foreshadowed a loss in the half year to December because of “provisions against losses on a small number of projects”.