Unsecured Smith & Davies New Zealand Limited creditors have agreed to a payment compromise allowing the company to avoid liquidators.
According to documents lodged with the companies office today, unsecured creditors have agreed to accept an average amount of 26.46 cents in the dollar.
The full amount owed to unsecured creditors is $1.777 million of which $345,526 will be paid out. The related partie “ HarvestPro and KFI Leasing“ will not receive any monies owed.
According to the compromise, parties suffering the greatest loss include Z Energy which was owed $371,492 and will receive $74,298.
Value Tyres, which was owed $257,741, and it will receive $51,548.
It is not yet known how much Mercedes-Benz Financial and GE Finance and Insurance Limited have recouped from the repossessed trucks, utes, plant and equipment that was seized in April and is currently being marketed by Turners Trucks and Machinery.
The estimated value of the unsatisfied debt to GE Finance was $11.2 million and Mercedes-Benz Financial was more than $12.5 million.
Itochu Corporation was a third secured creditor with a estimated unsatisfied debt value of $1.2 million.
The compromise brings resolution after a troubled period for the company.
After the shutdown of its sister company, HarvestPro, by secured creditors in March, workers at the Auckland branch of Smith & Davies Ltd were informed last week that the company is œshutting its doors.
DIESELtalk understands that the 88-year-old Auckland construction and transport company which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Kiwi Forestry International, has ceased trading.
Managing director Bob Grove, who purchased Smith & Davies Ltd in 2004 with fellow managing director Graham MacKinnon, denied that the company was being placed in receivership or liquidation when contacted by DIESELtalk by phone last week.
McKinnon, who is the nephew of Glyn Tyler-Davies (son of company co-founder Alun Tyler-Davies) was not available to speak to DIESELtalk.
On Monday May 4, First Union members at the Auckland branch of Smith & Davies Ltd were instructed to return their work vehicles and surrender any other company property according to the union’s general secretary Robert Reid.
Reid says workers were told the company is shutting it doors but the status of their employment was not clarified.
Two other wholly owned subsidiary companies of Kiwi Forestry International“ being HarvestPro and logging truck operator Smith & Davies New Zealand Ltd“ ceased operation on March 12, when the trucks and forestry equipment of both companies was repossessed by the secured creditors.
Reid says that Smith & Davies New Zealand Limited has not paid out notice or redundancy pay for workers who were covered under the collective agreement. He says the First Union currently has a claim against the company for this money. However, many of the HarvestPro workers in Northland and Gisborne were paid wages.
A number of the Smith & Davies New Zealand Limited forestry trucks and members of staff in Northland were acquired by Stan Semenoff Transport but the First Union says that workers were not notified of the arrangement until more than a week after it happened.
Some of the repossessed forestry trucks, as well as SUV and 4×4 pick up vehicles, are currently being offered to the market on a buy-now basis through Turners Trucks and Machinery.
Smith & Davies joined forces with HarvestPro in 2011 under the umbrella of parent Kiwi Forestry international (KFI), based in Silverdale.
According to the KFI website Smith & Davies MD Graham MacKinnon is listed as the parent company’s joint managing director with Zane Cleaver (who was one of the HarvestPro founders) while the other Smith & Davies MD, Bruce Grove is listed as an executive director alongside fellow executive director and company chair Andrew Chalmers, who was a founding director of HarvestPro.
In March Smith & Davies managing director Graham MacKinnon told Stuff that he had resigned from the Kiwi Forestry board.
At that time MacKinnon told Stuff HarvestPro had not been placed in receivership but its finance company had taken back harvest plant and equipment.
The merger of HarvestPro and Smith & Davies was being œdisintegrated, said McKinnon.
Smith & Davies would continue as normal and was not cutting any staff, he said at the time.
According to Logger magazine editor John Ellegard in his May 2015 magazine story The fall of HarvestPro the pairing of a harvesting business with a logging and civil transport company in 2011 seemed like a good match.
In the Logger magazine story Ellegard says it was one of the largest operations of its kind in New Zealand.
Ellegard also says in the story the creation of Kiwi Forestry International was supposed to have taken HarvestPro to the next level.
By joining with Smith & Davies it would position the newly enlarged business to take advantage of rising international demand and pricing for commodities, combined with the opportunity of New Zealand’s sizeable wall of wood’ forestry stock, says Ellegard.
Smith & Davies was founded in 1927 by Alun Tyler-Davies and his stepfather Len Smith as a two-man operation to cart milk from a farm to the local dairy.
It grew into into a multifaceted transportation and construction company, specialising in bulk and heavy haulage, road construction, site works, log cartage, and metal cartage.
