A British fruit and vegetable firm has reportedly gone bust with the loss of almost 20 jobs.
Bellows Direct Food Services has filed for administration with almost £1 million owed to creditors, the Romsey Advertiser reports.
The firm, which recently moved to Romsey, in Hampshire, from Southampton, was run by Dan Fitzhenry, deputy leader of the Southampton City Council’s Conservative opposition and spokesman for economic development.
He told the Advertiser that letting the business' staff go was “horrible”.
The move reportedly brings to an end almost a century of the family firm dealing in fresh produce, with five generations of Fitzhenry’s family involved in the business, which began with the door-to-door sale of Alresford watercress in the early 1900s.
According to the Advertiser, Bellows started delivering fresh produce in its current format in 2009, and had “grown rapidly” to the point last year where it was delivering to about 250 organisations, ranging from restaurants and hotels to the Ageas Bowl and Hampshire County Council.
Among the goods provided to contractors were fresh fruit and vegetables, dairy, frozen and dry products and cheeses.
Fitzhenry, who was reportedly managing director as well as owning 51 per cent of the business, said that to keep up with the growing demand, an investment deal for a private individual to pump in more funding had been struck.
However much of the agreed investment failed to materialise, and left the company in difficulties that it was ultimately unable to resolve.
In the last year of operation, debts to various suppliers had built up, with debts adding up to £950,000 including payments owed to 30 creditors, as well as an extra £50,000 owed to Fitzhenry himself.
The firm only moved to new premises in the Romsey Industrial Estate in January, after its previous offices in Queensway, Southampton, were earmarked for demolition to to make way for hundreds of new flats in the Fruit and Vegetable Market development.
Fitzhenry added that his 18 members of staff were paid until the end, and noted that he had found interviews and potential positions for '70-80 per cent' of his staff at competitors.
“It’s been a very gruelling process,” he told the Advertiser.
“The most difficult bit is looking at the people who have been so supportive and proud of what we we did, and worked so hard, and having to tell them that you couldn’t do it, that you couldn’t save what you needed to save.'
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