Thu, 19 Jun 2025 | ADMINISTRATION
A machine building firm in Devon with a history dating back to the 1930s has fallen into administration. Ivybridge-based Meddings Thermalec Limited offered pool heating systems, engineering machinery and metal fabrication services.
Despite being a longstanding business, the company had struggled over recent years with headwinds including falling sales, increasing overheads and intensifying competition from overseas.
In 2019, the company invested heavily in its engineering machinery and metal fabrication divisions in an effort to increase sales and boost profitability. However, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic the following year meant that this increase in sales failed to occur. The company was ultimately unable to return to pre-pandemic sales levels until 2023.
The company's financial issues were further exacerbated by a lack of investment in its core product lines, which administrator Michelle Weir of Lameys said led to a “sustained reduction in sales” and the business beginning to incur “substantial losses”.
With a lack of available funds to invest in product R&D, the company reportedly had no ability to reverse these losses, leading to the directors being forced to appoint administrators.
Lameys’ Michelle Weir was subsequently appointed as administrator and the company ceased trading, with all 19 staff being made redundant. The administrator is now seeking a buyer for the company’s assets.
Ms Weir commented: "The difficulties faced by Meddings are a reflection of the challenges faced by the UK’s manufacturing industry, where more overseas competition plus increased operational costs continue to put a strain on companies who may struggle to fully diversify.”
"Meddings has a great brand name and reputation, and I’m confident that there are opportunities for interested parties to save a part of the underlying business so that Meddings as a brand may continue."
Director Peter Meddings, grandson of the firm’s original founder William J Meddings, said that, despite the company’s previous resilience, “the impact of Covid at a time when we had invested heavily, coupled with various external factors, resulted in a trading environment that we could not continue to operate successfully in."
In accounts for the year ending March 31 2023, the company's fixed assets were valued at around £995,000 and current assets of close to £1.4 million. However, its net liabilities at the time exceeded £907,000.
Find out more about the headwinds manufacturing firms have faced over recent years
Read about some of the steps that owners at struggling businesses can take to secure a sale prior to insolvency
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