Gold Coast Auzmet companies, linked to Shane and Robert Tucker are in liquidation with $1.3m debts
A MAJOR commercial construction company owned by a famous family of drag car racers is the latest to go bust, owing well over $1 million to small and medium businesses on the Gold Coast and beyond.
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A MAJOR commercial construction company linked to a famous family of drag car racers is the latest to go bust, owing well over $1 million to small and medium businesses on the Gold Coast and beyond.
Auzmet Panels Pty Ltd and Auzmet Pty Ltd, two of a group of companies linked to father and son Rob and Shane Tucker, went into liquidation early this month, with the Queensland Building and Construction Commission suspending both licences.
The businesses have an office in Melbourne and expanded in 2014 to the United States where Shane Tucker, 33, is a pro stock racer for his dad’s Rob Tucker Racing team in the United States National Hot Rod Association series.
Documents lodged with ASIC detail debts of $1.35 million to 60 unsecured creditors, many small businesses, owed amounts ranging from a few hundred dollars to more than $200,000.
However the documents list another 22 secured creditors, 11 employees and five related parties who are owed unspecified amounts, so the full debt is likely to be sharply higher than documented.
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Company records show Auzmet is ultimately owned by Robert Tucker, while Auzmet Panels is ultimately owned by Shane Tucker — although both Tuckers recently relinquished their roles as directors three weeks before the companies liquidated.
On April 11, Andrew John Keogh of Warwick became director of Auzmet and Jake Aaron Dashwood of St Kilda became director of Auzmet Panels.
The family could not be reached for comment by phone or email.
One local supplier, who spoke on condition of anonymity but is listed as being owed more than $100,000, said Auzmet had come undone on two major projects in Brisbane, including a $19 million job to install a “curtain wall” facade on a $175 million Buranda student accommodation tower south of the Brisbane CBD.
“It’s not good,” the supplier said.
“Not only are we out of pocket, but it increases our bills because we have to chase the money.
“They don’t understand that the people they’re crucifying are people with their own businesses who are trying to make something of themselves.”
Auzmet’s striking aluminium facades feature on the Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital, The Strand Coolangatta, Ikea North Lakes and various car dealerships on the Gold Coast and in Springwood.
Another Gold Coast creditor, who did not want to be named but is owed more than $7000 by Auzmet, said liquidations were having such an impact on business they’d had to set up a specific “bad debts written off” account.
“We have had so many people going belly up on us,” the business owner said.
“Some years it seems to average one per month.
“We have an allowance for bad debts in our budgeting and it is about 2 per cent of our turnover, though in bad years it can be much higher than that.”
The Tucker family is a Queensland motorsport dynasty. Rob Tucker is a drag racing veteran; his daughter Kirsten Tucker-Cannuli, 35, was the first female driver in the Pro Stock category in Australia; and his son-in-law is dragracer John Cannuli.
Shane Tucker was also a founding director of the charity Peace for the Children, which was fronted by television personality Tania Zaetta in 2011.
While Zaetta was cleared of any wrongdoing, the organisation folded after it was revealed it was not registered when it raised $29,000 in donations from October 2010 to January 2011.
The charity was fined $50,000 and its former co-director Grant Hilton $10,000 after an investigation by the Office of Fair Trading, in which Mr Tucker was never charged.
Ms Tucker-Cannuli and her husband were embroiled in a scandal of their own in 2016 after they failed to pay off a last-resort loan when ordered to by a court.
The lender initiated bankruptcy proceedings against each of the pair, however the petitions were dismissed.
Auzmet Architectural’s website was still displaying the companies’ suspended QBCC licence numbers yesterday and described Shane Tucker as having “a unique image and charismatic personality making for a very marketable athlete and spokesman for Auzmet”.
* Do you have information about this story? Email kathleen.skene@news.com.au
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