Dart Engineering Ltd was put into liquidation yesterday with staff still in the dark about their future.<\/p>\n
The company was owned by Regan Williamson who is now living in Canada, having left the country just before Christmas telling staff he was off on a short break \u2014 but he never came back.<\/p>\n
His wife, who is Canadian, and three children moved to Canada about the middle of last year.<\/p>\n
The liquidation application was granted by Associate Judge Lester. Two liquidators from Auckland, Wendy Somerville and Malcolm Hollis, were appointed.<\/p>\n
The court did not provide the exact details of the amount of money owed by the company to the\u00a0Otago Daily Times, which was not in court in Christchurch.<\/p>\n
Inland Revenue had applied to put the company into liquidation over a tax debt of $1.16million. Inland Revenue declined to comment yesterday.<\/p>\n
Staff at the company\u2019s Dunedin headquarters were unsure of what was happening with the business when approached yesterday morning.<\/p>\n
The business also operates in Queenstown, where it started 20 years ago.<\/p>\n
One manager in the Dunedin office said he knew nothing about what was going on and was waiting until the end of the day.<\/p>\n
About 25 people worked at the Dunedin business in Kaikorai Valley Rd but many had already left, after being offered opportunities at other engineering businesses in Dunedin.<\/p>\n
Another worker was helping clean out the workshop and obtaining equipment for other businesses who had lent it to Dart Engineering.<\/p>\n
The man confirmed staff had been paid this week.<\/p>\n
The man said the business had been a victim of an ever changing construction business. The company had just finished a job at the outpatient building for the new Dunedin hospital, he said.<\/p>\n
The company\u2019s showroom for light fabrication further along Kaikorai Valley Rd was empty and was believed to have been cleaned out by staff in recent days.<\/p>\n
A source told the\u00a0Otago Daily Times\u00a0yesterday many people in the South were wondering where cars and boats owned by Mr Williamson were now stored and who owned them.<\/p>\n
Mr Williamson was believed to have set up an engineering business in Canada, operating in Red Deer, a city in Alberta with a population of 100,000.<\/p>\n
Mr Williamson had competed in jetboat marathons to an international level and placed in the top three at the world jetboat marathon championships in recent years.<\/p>\n
He sent a boat to the world championships in the United States in 2020 just before Covid-19 struck. The championships were canned because of the pandemic and the boat and Mr Williamson reunited in 2022.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dart Engineering Ltd was put into liquidation yesterday with staff still in the dark about their future. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":316346,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-316345","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-new-zealand","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=316345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316345\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/316346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}