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Anyone who is owed money by collapsed building firm Camerons has been invited to a creditors’ meeting later this month.
The contractor – one of the island’s largest – stopped trading on Tuesday 28 February.
The company had two major projects in Jersey at the time – building the former Ann Court for Andium Homes, and the Bath Street Merchants Square development for Le Masurier.
Many of its employees and sub-contractors turned up for work that Tuesday morning to find the site gates closed.
The company, which was founded in the early 50s and was part of the Guernsey-based Garenne Group, said its decision to wind up the firm was due to its failure to renegotiate some “problematic contracts”.
It added that “a sustained period of financial difficulty created directly and indirectly by a variety of factors, including (without limitation) Brexit, the Covid-19 pandemic, rising interest rates, supply chain issues, materials and labour shortages, and spiralling costs” was also to blame.
At the meeting at the Royal Yacht Hotel on Monday (27 March), creditors will be asked to approve the nominated liquidators of the company.
Pictured: Andium Homes' Cyril Le Marquand Court is now being completed by contractor ROK.
Once appointed, the liquidators will formally wind up the company and distribute Camerons’ assets in line with Jersey law, which was updated last year to make the insolvency process simpler.
Work resumed under a new main contractor, ROK, at the Andium site, which is now called Cyril Le Marquand Court, just 24 hours after Camerons' collapse because the social housing provider knew that all was not well with the firm and had been devising a Plan B for several months.
The site is in the latter stages of construction, with almost half of all homes already occupied.
At Merchants Square, owner and developer Le Masurier is currently talking to all sub-contractors and updating the build programme.
It is expected that work on the site will resume next month.
Le Masurier will not be appointing a new main contractor but has employed a construction management team, and will liaise with all sub-contractors and consultants directly.
The firm has told purchasers that there may be further delays to reported completion dates but it not known how long this will be at this stage.
It has pledged to update purchasers as soon as a new delivery programme has been finalised.
The completion date as it stands is next March.
Although the collapse of Camerons has no bearing on other parts of the Garenne Group, the Guernsey-based firm has undergone significant change over the past seven months.
The group used to own several businesses spread across Guernsey, Jersey and the UK, but following an announcement last August that the group would be restructuring, there have been several sales and management buyouts, leading to the group’s portfolio shrinking considerably.
Last week it was announced that RG Falla – a building firm which sat under the Garenne umbrella - had been acquired by a private investment company in Guernsey, and later in the week, the business said that its chairman had left the group.
It added that the group continued to focus on its new ‘investment-based business model’ which had prompted the sales and management buyouts.
It said: “[The new owners] are benefiting from the strong foundations laid while those companies were members of the group.
“The group directors are pleased to note that these businesses are prospering under new leadership.
"This change in business model was prompted by the retirement of two key executives and retirement planning for the principal shareholder.”
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