Creditors report reveals reasons why Brisbane RVs collapsed

A new report reveals the reasons why a Queensland caravan company went bust and why creditors, owed $6 million, will be left out of pocket.

HAVE we reached peak caravanning?

The increasing number of failures of caravan retailers and manufacturers would seem to indicate some trouble in caravan land.

Worrells partner Lee Crosthwaite, who is handing the liquidation of Burpengary-based BJ Saggers Investments, has shed some light on the increasingly troubled sector.

In a report to creditors, Crosthwaite says BJ Saggers, which traded as Brisbane RVs, had seen a substantial increase in competition in the years before it collapsed in March.

To make matters worse, former employee Andrea McCone was charged with defrauding the company for in excess of half a million dollars.

That matter has been adjourned to the Redcliffe Magistrates Court until September.

The real death knell for the company came in February when it received a demand notice from Wells Fargo International Finance Australia, a division of the US financial giant, requiring repayment of more than $3 million under a floorplan finance facility.

Floor planning financing is a type of short-term loan used by retailers to purchase high-cost inventory, with the loans often secured by the inventory.

Brisbane RV collapsed owing about $6 million.

Crosthwaite says the company attempted to reach an agreement with Wells Fargo but negotiations fell over with the financier taking possession of 56 caravans in late February.

Crosthwaite and colleague Raj Khatri were called in as voluntary administrators of the company on March 1.

Crosthwaite says Wells Fargo has managed to recoup $1.8 million selling some of those caravans but faces a shortfall of approximately half a million dollars.

Meanwhile Crosthwaite has sold some company assets for $40,000 and caravans for $628,338. Given the company collapsed owing more than $6 million that’s a lot of money that has gone down the drain.

This week also saw the collapse of Slacks Creek-based The Motorhome Conversion Company, owing more than $3 million.

SNACK ATTACK

CITY Beat is awarding the over-packaging award of the year to Coles in Racecourse Road, Ascot. Spotted nestled amongst the cheese and cream the other day was a plastic tub calling itself a “snack pot”.

This consisted of two boiled eggs nestled on a few wilting spinach leaves, all encased in plastic probably destined for the bottom on Moreton Bay.

The egg and spinach pot on offer at Coles. Supermarket packing gone mad?

Are people really too busy to boil a couple of eggs these days?

It seem supermarkets aren’t listening to environmental groups and governments who say overuse of plastics is out of control, with much of the rubbish ending up in our rivers and oceans.

TAKING STOCK

WILL it or won’t it? The Australian stock market is edging closer to a record high but we are still 155 points of the 6851.5 reached on November 1, 2007.

The Australian market is edging closer to a record.

One long-term market watcher, Bell Potter stockbroker Stu Smith, has faith the big day will arrive soon.

“The impetus is there and there is so much cash,” says Brisbane-based Smith, who been in the business since the 1960s. “Australia is the safe haven of the world geographically and look where we are politically.” Time will tell no doubt.

VGI SNARES A MCDONALD

SYDNEY-BASED VGI Partners Global Investments has managed to nab a member of Queensland’s high-profile McDonald family as an indepedent director.

Adelaide McDonald, whose various family members have been pastoralists in Queensland for more than a century, joins VGI after a high-flying career at KPMG and BDO Kendall.

Adelaide’s late father Bob McDonald ran the family’s pastoral business MDH with his brother Don and was a Cloncurry Shire councillor for 40 years.

Her cousin is Susan McDonald, the newly minted LNP senator for Queensland and managing director of the Super Butcher chain of butcher shops.