TEAM Group survives administration after creditor meeting, Comlek paid $118,000

Employees at Mackay’s TEAM Group can breathe easy after the company successfully emerged from voluntary administration. Here’s what happened.

Mackay mining service and engineering business TEAM Group has entered voluntary administration. Picture: Zoe Devenport

Employees at Mackay mining and engineering business TEAM Group will keep their jobs after the company successfully extinguished its whopping debt burden and returned to trading this week.

It is understood the company held almost $9m in debt when it entered voluntary administration in early April.

Administrator Richard Hughes took over the company and presented a deed-of-company-arrangement, or a proposal to settle claims to avoid liquidation, to creditors at a meeting on May 19.

The DOCA extinguishes the debt and delivers a set of payouts to various creditors.

TEAM will pay out 100 cents on the dollar to 50 ordinary unsecured creditors, amounting to about $260,000.

General manager Andrew Hegerty said the payment would fulfil the company’s obligations to Mackay’s “mum and dad” businesses.

“We do a lot of work in the Mackay community and we thought it appropriate, which is why the directors kicked in the additional money to ensure all the mum and dad investors so to speak who we deal with on a daily basis were made whole,” he said.

It will also pay $14,800 to the Australian Taxation Office, $16,870 to Duratray and $118,300 to Comlek, one of its largest creditors.

Comlek claimed it was owed $1.6m from TEAM.

Mackay mining service and engineering business TEAM Group entered voluntary administration in April 2023. Picture: Zoe Devenport

Mr Hegerty said his company disputed the figure.

Mr Hughes said on May 22 a majority of TEAM’s creditors and all of its employees voted for the DOCA, but Comlek voted against it.

“The company essentially today will emerge from administration and continue on trading,” Mr Hughes said.

“All employees keep their jobs and their full entitlements keep going. “They will not be out of pocket at all.”

Comlek itself entered voluntary administration in December last year after it was hit with a $9.4m tax bill from the Queensland Revenue Office for unpaid payroll tax going back to 2010.

Mr Hughes said the payouts would be delivered quickly and called the agreement a “good outcome”.

“It allows the company to continue to trade, which is what a VA is designed to do,” he said.

Mr Hughes said related entities, or other members of the company group, held a majority of TEAM’s $9m debt.

TEAM is located at Paget and offers a variety of industrial services to ports, mining and material handling companies.

Its clients in the Bowen Basin include BHP, Glencore and Anglo American.