A fresh produce industry executive has been banned from being a company director for six years.
Steve Spikings was a director of salad supplier Total Value Marketing when it went into liquidation in 2010, owing creditors more than £2 million.
He has now been disqualified and is not allowed to act as a director to a company until August 2018.
Total Value Marketing (TVM) was based in the Lea Valley growing area on the Hertfordshire-Essex border and supplied supermarkets including Tesco with UK-grown and imported glasshouse produce.
When TVM went into liquidation it owed money to 48 different companies including Agrexco (nearly £400,000), Dutch Salads BV (some £277,000,) Hortamar (£227,000) and Vicasol (£116,000).
The company owed near-neighbour Valley Grown Salads (VGS) more than £25,000. VGS owner and director Jimmy Russo said of Spikings: “He has been disqualified for six years and rightly so. It is an absolute disgrace that he operated like that, putting the company in financial difficulty. He should be disqualified for life. Companies like that are not good for the industry - £2m has been removed from the industry because of their incompetence.”
Another major creditor told FPJ “I thought Spikings was a friend. I treated him well, we had a good working relationship. Then he disappeared. We had a creditors’ meeting but we didn’t get any money back.”
And another added: “Spikings placed a lot of orders but when there was no way to keep the company going, he just disappeared and left others with problems.”
Spikings was disqualified under the Companies Directors Disqualification Act 1986, which bars him based on previous conduct while acting as a company director. The Boston, Lincolnshire-based Spikings’ ban began on 3 August 2012.
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