Ely publishing company goes into liquidation with debts of £500,000 including £26,000 to their bank and £75 to their window cleaner
Newspaper offices sold in Ely and former Melrose Press office on the market. Picture: ROBINSON LAYER - Credit: Archant
Price Bailey has been appointed liquidator to the Ely publishing company Melrose Press Ltd that has gone into administration with debts approaching £500,000.
According to figures produced by Price Bailey there are 498 creditors who between them are owed £278,748.54.
Creditors range from many individuals to firms closer to home such as Burwell Window Cleaning owed £75.
Barclays Bank in Ely is shown as being owed £25,204 whilst the list of creditors covers individuals from all parts of the globe including Lebanon, South Africa, Australia, Switzerland, Spain, Croatia and Brazil.
A resolution of the directors that the company “be wound up voluntarily” was made earlier this month. The company’s offices at St Thomas’s Place, Ely, are already being advertised for re-letting.
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The company operated a form of partnership publishing whereby authors submitted manuscripts and helped with the cost of print and production, receiving royalties once the book is in print and sales are made.
It has operated out of Ely since the 1970s but the administrators offer few clues as to why it hit financial difficulties.
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A separate list of 10 employees and directors is grouped into preferential and unsecured creditors, with the latter totalling £148,620.25 out of a total of £173.66.00. Most of the names on this list are local from Ely, Littleport, Fordham, Wilburton and Wicken with the highest creditor individual creditor being owed £36,850 and four other over £20,000.
The final list is what is termed consumer creditors, which has 309 names and addresses on a list, each owed £1.
Company information on line says Melrose Press Limited is a liquidated company incorporated on November 3, 1969 with the registered office located in Ely, Cambridgeshire.
Melrose Press Limited has been running for 49 years 3 months. Until it went into liquidation it had five active directors.
In one set of previous year’s accounts it notes that “the nature of the company’s business is such that there can be considerable unpredictable variation in the time of cash flows. The directors have due consideration to this and ensure that appropriate funding is in place.”
One of the Melrose directors was Nicholas Simon Law, who was also a director of vanity publishing firm Pentland Ltd that collapsed in 2002 with debts of £260,000 and 1,000 creditors, mainly wannabe authors.
