21/10/2014
NEWS STORY
Caterham Sports, which builds the cars for the Caterham F1 team, has gone into administration.
Caterham Sports (CSL), which is based at Leafield, designs and builds the cars for the Caterham F1 team under licence from the 1 Malaysia Racing Team (1MRT).
1MRT is a Malaysian company which owns Caterham Sports and provides it with management fees to run the F1 team. In turn 1MRT gets income from prize money and the team's sponsors including technology firms Dell and Intel.
It is the F1 team that was bought in the summer by a Swiss/Middle East consortium of which little is known.
The administrator, London-based Smith Williamson, is in talks with 1MRT about continuing the relationship between Caterham Sports and the F1 team, a relationship on which hundreds of jobs are dependent.
It is said the company owes between £12m - £15m to suppliers, hence a visit by the bailiffs earlier this month to seize various equipment including a test car (2013), F1 car parts, F1 simulator, Caterham F1 steering wheels, F1 wheels with tyres, high quality drilling & machining equipment, Caterham & Lotus F1 memorabilia, various pit lane equipment including jacks, pumps and starters, TVs, monitors and other goods and equipment.
According to Business Sale.com, CSL director Constantin Cojocar applied for an insolvency procedure for the company via a court order. In the court paperwork he reveals he has not received the £2 million a week he had expected from backers which he was planning to use to pay off creditors, and was consequently forced to choose insolvency.
Possible buyers for CSL, who are in conversation with Smith Williamson, include (team boss) Manfredi Ravetto, 1MRT and current 1MRT director Michael Willmer.