As we enter a period of instability that many of us are likely to have never seen before, there has been a new dual-announcement with regards to the administration of Aperture Trading Limited. Firstly, an update from the administrators:

Following their appointment on 16 March 2020 as joint administrators of Aperture Trading Limited, Chris Pole and Will Wright from KPMG’s Restructuring practice have confirmed that they have sold certain assets of the company to Altrincham Doors Limited and Altrincham Roofs Limited.

The assets included in the sale related to the Global, Celsius and Stratus roofing products. Whilst these businesses had ceased trading prior to the acquisition, the purchasers have indicated an intention to launch the Stratus product in the near future as well as exploring the reintroduction of the other roofing systems at a later date.

Tim Bateson, restructuring director at KPMG, said: “Whilst we are continuing to market the remaining businesses and assets of the Company, we’re delighted to have completed this sale, which will recover value for the company’s creditors.”

And here is a statement from Ultraframe announcing the acquisition of certain assets from Aperture:

Ultraframe has acquired from the administrators of Aperture Trading Limited, certain of the assets relating to the Global, Celsius and Stratus roofing products, including the tools and equipment but excluding others, such as the customer or supply arrangements.

By way of background, the Synseal business failed in March 2019, with its business being bought out of administration by Aperture Trading Ltd. A year later, despite this fresh start, the business failed a second time going into administration again in March 2020. This time no buyer was found for the whole business nor was a buyer found for any of the roof businesses as continuing enterprises. The businesses were wound down and ceased trading some time prior to the sale.

We note that the sales of Global roofs had fallen dramatically from annual sales of c.£30m around 5 years ago to a run rate of under £5m this winter, pre Covid-19. In recent years, there has been a shift away from glass roofs to solid pitched roofs and to flat roof extensions within the home extension market. This market trend accounts for some of the decline of the Global roof although the scale of its decline is symptomatic of more fundamental issues within the wider Global product offer.

The Celsius and Global roofs are complex systems with the Global roof having around 2,000 parts. A large amount of Global parts were extruded or sourced from the Huthwaite extrusion plant, which has also been mothballed by the Administrator. While we will talk to all industry stakeholders to understand the future potential of reintroducing elements of these roofing systems at a later date, relaunching them in the current economic climate is not feasible.

The Stratus lantern is different, being a much simpler product with just over 100 parts and therefore it is more feasible for Ultraframe to manufacture Stratus from its existing facilities. We hope that with our track record of improving roofing products, and the fact Stratus is a much simpler product, we can restart production of the Stratus lantern soon.

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