Sixty-nine employees have been made redundant after independent mobile phone retailer Allphones collapsed into voluntary administration on Monday.
Phil Carter, Daniel Walley and Mark Robinson of PPB Advisory have been appointed as voluntary administrators of the nine entities that comprise the Allphones Group. The business has 84 stores and approximately 440 staff across Australia.
Twenty-five Allphones stores are company owned, seven are franchises, and the remainder are licensed and operated by other parties.
Eighteen of the company-owned Allphone stores were closed on Monday, with administrators citing “insufficient funding” to keep them running during the sale process. The remaining stores will continue to trade as usual as the voluntary administration process continues.
“We are today undertaking an urgent review of Allphones’ business in order to stabilise the current operations and store network, and ensure that the employees impacted by the store closures today are fully supported,” administrator Phil Carter said in a statement.
Allphones was founded in South Australia in 1989 and expanded into other Australian states in the 2000s. In 2012, Canadian telco Glentel purchased Allphones parent company AMT Group for $70 million. At the time, the business had 170 stores in its network.
According to the administrators, the Allphones Group was acquired by a single Canadian shareholder in May 2016, with a view to undertake a turnaround of the business.
“Despite financial support from the shareholder and significant efforts to deliver a successful turnaround, the shareholders are unable to continue funding the group’s losses,” PPB advisory said in a statement.
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