Liquidator probes property sale before $7 collapse of iconic manufacturer

Liquidators of a 54-year-old Brisbane manufacturer are investigating several transactions before the company’s $7 million collapse earlier this year, including the sale of a prime industrial property.

Liquidators have been called into Brisbane manufacturing business Sharp Plywood.

LIQUIDATORS of a 54-year-old Brisbane manufacturing business are investigating several transactions that occurred before the company‘s $7.5 million collapse earlier this year including the sale of a property and a mortgage granted to the Australian Taxation Office.

Sharp Plywood produced high quality wood work for some of the state’s best known public buildings but fell victim to cheap Chinese imports.

Liquidator Gavin Morton, of Morton & Lee Insolvency, has told creditors in a report that preliminary investigations show a leasehold property owned by the company at 1161 Boundary Road, Wacol, was sold in February 2020 several months before the appointment of administrators in May.

“Further investigations need to be undertaken to confirm the commerciality of this transaction, whether all proceeds were received and how funds were disbursed,” said Mr Morton.

 Mr Morton said in December last year the company granted a second registered mortgage to the ATO over the company’s premises at 1171 Boundary Rd, Wacol, as security for a $1.4 million debt.

Brisbane manufacturing business Sharp Plywood has gone into liquidation.

“The effect of this transaction appears to have elevated the ATO’s position from unsecured to secured,” said Mr Morton. He said a preliminary review of the company’s loan accounts with related entities also indicated a number of transactions that reduced asset accounts.

Founded by Jack Sharp in 1945, the family business owned a substantial amount of property around its factory in the city’s southern industrial heartland.  

 But in recent years it had struggled against a rising tide of Chinese imports. Mr Morton told creditors that the company had incurred losses for the past three years but up until June 2017 had significant assets.  

“Further investigations need to be undertaken to confirm the assets that have been disposed of, the circumstances in which they were disposed and whether any sales were at value,” he said.

“If the assets were sold for no consideration, or unreasonable consideration was received, those disposals may be uncommercial and voidable by a liquidator.”

 Sharp, which employed about 17 people manufacturing veneers and panels for kitchens, furniture, commercial fit outs, panels and doors, had worked on wood panelling for the Brisbane Supreme and District Court complex and the Abedian School of Architecture at Bond University.

 A separate entity was continuing to operate the business from the Wacol site under a licensing agreement.