BCT, one of the UK’s two remaining volume tile manufacturers, has announced that it has gone into administration on 30 January and ceased trading with immediate effect.
313 redundancies have been announced immediately, including 100 at the company’s Cleckheaton, West Yorkshire, site. The company’s headquarters are in Newton Abbot, Devon. A further 67 employees will be kept on for the time being, in order to support the “orderly winding down of the business”.
Alastair Massey, Tony Wright and Andrew Sheridan, partners at specialist business advisory firm FRP Advisory, have been appointed as joint administrators.
“British Ceramic Tile Limited is a leading player in the manufacturer of ceramic tiles, with a longstanding heritage in the local communities in which it operates and a stellar reputation for its quality products,” said Andrew Sheridan.
“Unfortunately, challenging trading conditions and the termination of a key customer contract in recent days have forced the business to enter administration and cease trading with immediate effect.
“We are currently providing support to the affected employees and are working closely with the Redundancy Payments Service to ensure the best possible outcome in this difficult period. In the meantime, we would urge any parties interested in acquiring the business to contact us as soon as possible.”
I run an independent tile shop and we used BCT a lot in the early years they had good products at reasonable prices and they had a good thing with Rogers Ceramics distributing for them (who now have also gone) but with rising prices of the product and the fact they started undercutting there own RRP and selling direct on there website we stopped using them in favor of other suppliers,
Sad to see them go but they really didn’t make it easy for Tile Fixing companies to buy direct from them