Ross-shire catering company Red Poppy £26,000 out of pocket from administration-hit Inverness Caley Thistle
A ROSS-SHIRE company owed money by Inverness Caledonian Thistle say they have held off on replacing members of staff to try and recover the losses they were owed by the football club.
Catering company Red Poppy have supplied food for the club’s hospitality suites and boxes for around a decade.
However, they were the local business owed the most money by far on the list of creditors published by Caley Thistle’s administrators BDO at the beginning of this week.
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While some companies were owed hundreds, and others thousands, Red Poppy were due £26,312.24.
Red Poppy director Nick Aburrow said that he had been repeatedly reassured that the debt would be paid before ICT entered administration in October, but that not having such a significant sum has led to staff members not being replaced and purchases of new equipment being put on hold.
“I’ve been with the club pretty steadily over the last 10 years I think, and we’ve always had issues – but we always get the money in the end,” he said.
“I just presumed that we would get it, and we kept being assured that we would get it and it was only a matter of time.
“It kept being delayed to next week, or next month, and that’s how it carried on. They did pay some of it before they went into administration, but it wasn’t a huge amount.
“Then administration hit, and we’ve had no feedback since then on whether we’ll get pennies on the pound or not.
“We’ve not replaced a couple of members of staff, who had been with us long-term, because this happened and we were trying to recover some of those losses before the start of the events season next year.
“Generally things have just been a lot more tight. We’ll be okay, but that’s not really the point.
“It still does have other effects. We had a business plan for the year that we had to drop back a bit – new equipment that was going to be purchased, and was half-organised thinking this money was going to come in that we couldn’t take any further.”
Red Poppy have supplied both Caley Thistle and Highland neighbours Ross County, so Mr Aburrow is well aware of the peaks and troughs of a football season and how that can affect cashflow.
Perhaps with that in mind, even despite the debt his company is owed, he is continuing to work with ICT.
That is in spite of very little optimism that Red Poppy will recover much of the £26,312.24 they were owed as the Caley Jags entered administration on October 22.
“I’m hoping to recover some of that money, but I don’t think it will happen really,” Mr Aburrow said.
“It’s just not a very good situation to be in, but we’ve supported the club over the last 10 years and we’re carrying on at the moment.
“For now, the administrators have asked us to carry on. We haven’t had any more information from them than that.
“From what I know of administration, you’re talking pennies in the pound.
“That’s a huge difference. It’s a bit disappointing, but I’ve known the club for so long and it has always been like this.
“That’s just football clubs, they’re all the same. You hang on and believe something will come when they tell you it will come, but then administration happened.
“I had been back and forth to the club quite a bit to push the issue, but they kept saying it would be fine.
“It just didn’t feel quite right, but I thought that if we did pull out, we really did have no chance of getting anything. We were reassured we would get something, but then they went into administration.”
