A large Australasian excavation company with operations in New Zealand, including Christchurch has gone into receivership.

Workers at Vac-U-Digga received the news via a letter from receiver specialist advisory restructuring Firm McGrathNicol on Monday.

The company’s Christchurch operations are on Tenahaun Place in Wigram.

The Australian owed company was involved in vacuum and hydro excavation, non-destructive digging, to ground penetrating radar work.

The letter addressed to workers said, “if you are an employee, who is owed money at the date of receivership for unpaid wages or salary, annual leave, long service leave, redundancy, or other benefits, you are also a creditor of the relevant company, you may be entitled to some or all of what you are owed in priority to the Company’s other creditors.”

Receiver Conor McElhinney told Chris Lynch Media in New Zealand, 35 staff members are affected and 14 workers in Christchurch have lost their jobs.

The fallout in Australia was much bigger with about 400 workers losing their jobs.

McElhinney said, generally speaking, several New Zealand operations were being affected by ongoing restructuring in Australia.

Other companies connected to Vac-U-Digga including Beacos NZ Limited (an asset company that owns the trucks) and VacTell NZ Limited are also in receivership.

In December 2019, Vac-U-Digga went through a restructuring process with a new financier being brought in, replacing another financier, who was partially paid out.

The company couldn’t turn the company around and continued to make significant losses.

There was good news for New Zealand staff.

Chris Lynch Media understands all New Zealand employees will be approached by competitors and offered jobs due to the high demand for skills.