A roll call of industry heavyweights – including Ingram Micro, Synnex and Lanier – are owed millions of dollars by liquidated sub-distie Tonnex, with most creditors unlikely to see any repayment.
A report from the liquidators Ferrier Hodgson showed that Synnex is due more than $525,000, Ingram Micro claims more than $512,000, and Lanier Australia is down almost $224,000.
Rival company Dynamic Supplies is owed $750,000 after last month’s legal victory against Tonnex that triggered the liquidation. Victoria’s Corporate Consumables is seeking the recovery of almost $544,000 from the failed business. Epson and Star Track Express were also owed significant amounts among the 54 creditors.
In total, unsecured creditors are owed about $3 million, while secured creditor Westpac is looking to recover $1.85 million. About $146,000 in employee entitlements is also outstanding.
An auction of company assets would only reap $40,000 and debtors had a book value of $1.121 million, according to the liquidators.
“Accordingly it is unlikely there will be a dividend to unsecured creditors,” said John Lindholm from Ferrier Hodgson.
It is likely that at least some of the creditors would have been insured. However, at the time of writing none of the major creditors had responded to CRN's requests for comment.
Epson was having stock returned, while Ingram and Synnex will sift through to identify and recover goods that originated from those disties. Lindholm also reported to creditors that authorising him to seek the sale of the company would be fruitless “given the circumstances”.
Tonnex, a printing consumables distributor and sub-distributor headquartered in Victoria, had defended a five-year copyright infringement claim brought on by Dynamic Supplies. The loss of its appeal in the Federal Court last month immediately precipitated the liquidation.
A statement from Tonnex’s directors said that “the company went into liquidation as they had poor legal advice”.
“The judgment against Tonnex in the Federal Court exposed the company to further costs which could not be paid.”
CRN reported at the time of the judgment that the clash involved a "compatibility chart" that Dynamic Supplies created with its own data, which was claimed to be similar to another that Tonnex published afterwards.
"We didn’t want to go to court in the first instance. We knew they stole the compatibility chart. We contacted them immediately to get them to stop using it – and here we are five years later," Dynamic Supplies’ managing director Scott McLennan told CRN at the time.
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