23/10/2014
NEWS STORY
The Caterham saga took another sad twist today as staff arrived to discover they had been locked out of the factory at Leafield.
Finbarr O'Connell, of administrators Smith & Williamson told the BBC that 1MRT, which until recently owned Caterham sports and still holds the grid slot for the team, had made an "inadequate" offer to continue using the Leafield site.
The factory has a £5.3m loan secured on it which Caterham Sports took out in 2012 from Export-Import Bank of Malaysia, and whilst the situation with 1MRT is being sorted out, staff are refused entry.
When Export-Import didn't receive instalments on the loan it put Caterham Sports into administration in order that the company's assets could also be sold at auction in order to recover the money. Caterham Sports was put into administration on Monday and the risk hanging over 1Malaysia Racing Team is that if it doesn't buy its assets at the auction it may not be able to continue racing.