Majority of workers at Walsall-based castings group's subsidiaries made redundant

Administrators have now been appointed to Chamberlin & Hill Castings at Chuckery Road, Walsall, and Russell Ductile Castings in Scunthorpe.

Trading has ceased before Raj Mittal and Benjamin Jones of FRP Advisory Trading were appointed as joint administrators.

They concluded that resuming trading of either business was not feasible.

There were 78 employees in Walsall and 51 in Scunthorpe at the time of the administration.

A small number of staff have been retained to assist with a controlled wind-down of the businesses.

FRP are supporting employees with their claims to the Redundancy Payments Service while they continue to liaise with customers and suppliers as administrators.

The group had employed 165 people in the financial year to the end of May last year.

The listed company had previously requested that trading in its ordinary shares on AIM, the Stock Exchange’s market for small and medium size growth companies, be suspended after being issued with a winding up petition by its main power supplier.

Chamberlin subsequently began an insolvency process after failing to secure a funding lifeline.

Chamberlin’s origins were in the founding in 1890 of the Chamberlin and Hill foundry.

Chamberlin had recently sold its specialist industrial manufacturing subsidiary Petrel in Kitts Green, Birmingham, in a £3 million deal to Project Apollo, part of investment firm Longacre Group.

Proceeds from the deal were expected to reduce the group’s liabilities.