Furniture manufacturer Westbridge has entered administration

Nearly 300 workers have lost their jobs at a Welsh furniture firm following its collapse into administration. Westbridge had been a respected furniture designer and manufacturer, providing sofas and other upholstered items to several high street and premium independent retailers.

The company employed just under 300 people at its facility in Holywell, Flintshire. Chris Pole and Will Wright from Interpath were last month appointed joint administrators to Westbridge Furniture Limited and Belfield Leisure Limited, based in Derbyshire.

They had kept the businesses running while evaluating market interest in buying them and preserving the jobs and sites.

However, the joint administrators have now confirmed that 297 staff had been made redundant

They said: “Chris Pole and Will Wright from Interpath were appointed joint administrators following operational disruption, weak trading and the loss of a key customer.

“Since their last update the joint administrators had maintained operations at Westbridge Furniture, while they completed outstanding work in progress and assessed interest in the business.

“Without any viable offers for the business, production ceased on April 2 and the business progressed with a wind-up process. It is with regret that the majority of the business’ 297 remaining staff have since been made redundant.

“The administrators will continue to provide support to those impacted, including supporting them with claims to the Redundancy Payments Service. A small number of staff have been retained to assist the joint administrators in their duties.”

Chris Pole, managing director at Interpath and joint administrator of Westbridge Furniture Limited, said: “The team at Westbridge has shown exceptional professionalism in maintaining production while we explored options.

“Regrettably, as no viable offers for the business were received, it was no longer possible to continue trading and we have had to take the difficult decision to close the business. We recognise this has been a challenging period for staff and I’d like to express my sincere thanks for their commitment.”

The joint administrators have since agreed the sale of the exclusive intellectual property and design rights to the full Westbridge independent product catalogue to sofa and upholstery manufacturer, Whitemeadow. The buyer intends to engage with stockists of Westbridge products to ensure continuity where possible.

Chris Pole added: “The agreement to sell the IP and design rights to Whitemeadow preserves Westbridge’s range for retailers. We wish the Whitemeadow team all the best as it embarks on a development programme to reintroduce those designs to the market.”

The joint administrators are continuing to operate and assess possibilities for Belfield Leisure Limited, which also forms part of The Belfield Group.

Rory Boland, travel editor at consumer publication Which?, says overall cancellations will be a very small proportion of the millions of flights in and out of the UK, and the changes will be targeted on routes where there are multiple flights a day so that passengers can be rebooked on to an earlier or later flight.

Bosses also blasted a “ridiculous tax” levied on the industry

Wine bottling firm Greencroft Bottling has blamed disruption in the Suez Canal for marring what would have been an exceptional year.

The County Durham-based business, which claims to be one of the most sustainable large contract firms of its type “on the planet” said temporary closure of the key waterway in 2024 impacted otherwise brilliant results. Attacks by Houthi Rebels on shipping in the Red Sea caused a drastic reduction in traffic through the canal, which Greencroft says caused “havoc” – leading to millions of pounds of penalties and other costs as huge volumes of wine hit North East ports over a two week period.

Despite the challenges, Greencroft, which is part of the Lanchester Group, managed to increase operating profits from £1.56m to £2.78m in the year to the end of June, 2025. Newly published documents also show turnover at the 300-strong firm increased from £62.5m to £86m.

With a £20m new production facility called Greencroft 2 now completed at its Annfield Plain base, and significant investments in sustainability measures, the firm is now looking ahead to what it expects to be its best ever year. Together with a new semi-automated warehouse, the new production facility – with the potential for 400million litres of capacity annually – is expected to make the company the “most efficient wine bottling and storage operation certainly in the UK if not in Europe”.

Bosses also looked forward to the benefits of bulk wine shipping, which is said to be better for the product and give the business high volumes. The new premises, powered by wind and solar energy, has the potential to handle the equivalent of 28% of all wine sold in the UK.

Writing in the Greencroft Bottling Company Limited accounts, managing director Mark Satchwell said: “Greencroft Bottling Company has had an excellent year with volume increasing by well over 20% which is amazing considering we have had such a turbulent year here in the UK, the new 18,000 an hour filling line in Greencroft 2 has been integrated into the business and working well and we have invested in more automation in our tank facility increasing our efficiency more than 40%.

“We continue to invest in the business with more automation to keep our cost base as low as possible the new Labour Government increased wine duty massively again this year after to huge 20% rise just 12 months ago, this is really harming the whole industry with duty alone moving up by nearly 40% over the last 15 months.

“And we have Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) to contend with yet another ridiculous tax on all businesses, but the liquor and hospitality industries have been the hardest hit it seems and not surprisingly there is at least one pub a day closing which is really harming the local communities.”