Simply staff come up with new Fillings

After going into administration at the end of October, Simply Go Foods has risen from the ashes to emerge as a new business under the name of...

After going into administration at the end of October, Simply Go Foods has risen from the ashes to emerge as a new business under the name of Fillings UK.

After 48 hours of negotiations, Simply Go was sold by the administrators for an undisclosed sum to a firm created by its former management and production staff. It was part of a group of companies to be wound up, including Simply Salads UK and Go Sandwiches Reading, operating as part of Go Foods.

Simply Go, which produced sandwiches, salads and sandwich fillings for the catering, retail and institutional markets, will now trade as Fillings UK from the same site in Cwmbran, Gwent where production has resumed.

Of the 132 Simply Go employees made redundant by administrator KPMG, 50 have been reappointed. There were 29 redundancies at the Simply Salads site in Bath and 77 at the Go Sandwiches site in Reading, which are no longer trading.

Jonathan Pope, joint administrator and director at KPMG, said: "The company had expanded through several mergers and acquisitions but unfortunately the new group had not proved to be financially viable. Prior to our appointment, these financial difficulties resulted in production ceasing and staff being sent home and we will now be reviewing the position of the companies."

Fillings UK is seeking grants from the Welsh Development Agency and equity from private sources. The director Piers Thomas said: "Up until a week before we went into administration the company was being supported by the bank and the team was confident that this was going to continue and they would support the rescue plan that had been drawn up, but that didn'tbhappen."

"As a completely new start-up company we will now go through a period of re-grouping and keeping costs as low as possible while we grow the business to a profitable size."