Oldham businesses were owed nearly £300,000 by Wilko when it collapsed.

The former high street giant didn’t have any stores in Oldham but the company’s statement of affairs has confirmed a number of Oldham businesses were owed money.

Administrators PricewaterhouseCoopers were brought in to try to save the company from closure, but all stores have now been shut, with some locations sold to other companies, such as Poundland.

According to the statement of affairs, four Oldham companies were owed a total of £281,211, as of August 10, 2023.

The companies are: Hunter Price International, based at Devon Mill, on Chapel Road; UP Global Sourcing, based at Chadderton’s Manor Mill; Professional Packagers and Processors Ltd, based in Grape Mill, on New Coin Street, Royton; and Widdop Bingham & Co Limited, based at Chadderton’s Broadway Business Park.

Sign up to our newsletters to get the latest stories sent straight to your inbox.

Hunter Price International is owed the most – with a whopping £204,843 owed by the failed business.

Founded in 2009, clients of Hunter Price include The Entertainer, B&M, Pets at Home, The Range, Iceland, Sports Direct, Asda, Poundland and more.

The company started by specialising in buying and selling excess and obsolete stock, and has launched own brands including ‘Toy Mania’ and ‘Craft Mania’.

In 2018, it moved into Oldham’s Devon Mill.

UP Global Sourcing UK Ltd, or Ultimate Products, which recently sponsored the Ultimate Oldham Business Expo, was owed the second largest amount, coming in at £63,271.

The company makes products branded for companies including Salter, Beldray, Kleeneze, and Progress.

It also has a licence agreement to use the Russell Hobbs name in cookware, though this does not include electrical appliances.

Professional Packagers and Processors Ltd, a third-party logistics company which provides services including inventory management, warehousing, and packaging, was owed £8,985.

Widdop Bingham & Co Limited, a gifts wholesaler first established in Yorkshire in 1883, was owed £4,112. The company moved to Chadderton in 1973 and claims to be the first company in the gift trade to install a computer.

An Ultimate Products spokesperson said: “We were very sorry to see the demise of Wilko. When the business fell into administration, UP was owed around £50,000, which is a small amount in the context of our yearly sales of around £160m.

“This was covered by our existing expected credit loss provision, so the company is unimpacted. UP continues to hold credit insurance on around 99 per cent of the total amount due from our customers, which limits the risk for our stakeholders when these situations arise.”

Hunter Price International and Professional Packagers and Processors Ltd both said they did not wish to comment.

Widdop Bingham & Co Limited was contacted for comment.

Follow The Oldham Times on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, and Threads.

Wilko owed around £625 million when it went bust.  Filing documents show that the retailer’s pension fund was left more than £50 million in deficit and is unlikely to receive more than £4 million following the insolvency process.

Many had been hoping the company could be saved. The company, which was founded in 1930 as Wilkinson Cash Stores, operated around 400 stores and employed 12,500 people.

Administrators PwC held talks with several interested companies, some of which wanted to buy some of the stores while others were interested in rights to the firm’s name.

The main hope lay with HMV owner Doug Putman, who had been in talks to take over the business as a whole and keep about 200 shops as a “going concern”, but no agreement could be reached mainly because of “infrastructure” costs.

Administrators said factors including the Covid-19 pandemic and tighter consumer budgets in the face of higher energy and mortgage costs had contributed to “cashflow pressure and a deterioration in trading.”