Creditors of Tate Wine have voted to liquidate the Margaret River wine producer after no proposals were received to revive the troubled business.
Creditors of Tate Wine have voted to liquidate the Margaret River wine producer after no proposals were received to revive the troubled business.
At a meeting on Friday, creditors of Tate Wine voted to liquidate the entities after an absence of deeds of company arrangements since the insolvency practitioners were appointed on November 7.
FTI Consulting was called in by creditor Westpac immediately after Cor Cordis administrators were voluntarily appointed in by the company, owned by Franklin and Heather Tate.
Tate Wine is the trading name for the group of entities Grape Expectations Vintners, Grape Expectations Enterprises and Grape Expectations Trust.
Grape Expectations Enterprises was focused on the harvesting and production of wine, while Grape Expectations Vintners was the marketing, sales and distribution side of the business.
The administrators’ initial report on Tate Wine’s affairs outlined it had about $23.9 million in total assets and $33.6 million in total liabilities. It had about $71,000 cash at bank at the time of its demise.
The practitioners' preliminary analysis estimates trade creditor claims of $12.1 million from Grape Expectations Enterprises and claims of about $3.8 million from trade creditors of Grape Expectations Vintners.
Priority creditors, being employees, are estimated to be owed about $1.1 million, the report spells.
Westpac holds security over all the properties, and at last count was owed a total $17.98 million.
The administrators' early-stage view is that Tate Wine may have been insolvent from as early as mid-2024 and was likely to have been insolvent from at least June 2025.
The directors’ pinned the company’s woes on its vineyard expansion impacting working capital, lower sales volumes and the loss of a key customer among other factors.
The administrators agreed but added the core reason for failure was the challenging wine market and operational difficulty that led to financial losses, cash constraints and working capital deficiencies.
In outlining the major events leading up to their appointment, Cor Cordis' listed outstanding payments to the tax office, other demands for payments, a winding up application and a Fair Work notice.
Tate Wine is the latest in a string of insolvencies in the alcoholic beverage producing scene in Western Australia, although the majority have been distillers and brewers.
