The Smart's Heath Lane grab hire firm entered administration on 27 July and sold the same day for £314,256. Creditors face a £732,000 shortfall.
A Woking haulage firm that had been trading for 37 years went into administration last month and was sold on the same day. Atlas Bulk Carriers Limited, which ran about 30 tipper and grab lorries from Smart’s Heath Lane, employed an average of 30 people in its last financial year.
The administrators’ proposals, filed at Companies House on 12 August, set out what happened (Companies House). The company entered administration on 27 July 2026, and the joint administrators completed a sale of the whole business and assets the same day.
The buyer is Farnham Grab Services Ltd, described in the report as an unconnected party. It is registered in Blackwater, Camberley, and was incorporated in October 2017 (Companies House).
What the company was
Atlas Bulk Carriers was incorporated on 20 February 1989 and its registered office was Unit 32, Smart’s Heath Lane, in the Heathlands ward of the borough. The administrators describe it as “an established provider of grab hire, muck away and aggregate supply services across London and the Home Counties”.
Its accounts show the shape of the problem:
| Year | Turnover | Gross profit | Net profit or loss |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | £4.456m | £1.095m | £137,000 profit |
| 2024 | £3.463m | £660,000 | £335,000 loss |
| 2025 | £4.140m | £1.005m | £141,000 loss |
Turnover recovered in the final year, but the company still lost money. Its filed accounts for the year to 30 June 2025 show net liabilities of £97,184, against net assets of £44,421 a year earlier, and an average of 30 employees against 34 the year before.
The administrators’ account of the cause is short. The company “had historically traded profitably”, they write, but recorded losses for two years “due to the general downturn in the wider construction industry”, and cash flow pressure left it insolvent.
Why it was sold in a day
The sale was a pre-pack: negotiated before the administrators were appointed and completed immediately afterwards. Insolvency practitioners have to justify that in a separate statement, and the reasoning here turns on one thing in particular.
Because the business ran on operator licences, the administrators say those licences would have been cancelled by the Traffic Commissioner, “meaning trade would not be possible”. A firm of lorries that cannot legally run lorries loses its value quickly. Ceasing to trade, they add, would have led to all staff being made redundant and to the vehicles being sold ex-situ for less.
The marketing was run by agents Pantera from 24 June. Eight parties expressed interest, four signed non-disclosure agreements, and one offer came back. It started at £200,000 on 2 July, rose to £350,000 on 8 July, then fell to £314,256 to account for holiday pay liabilities transferring with the staff under TUPE.
Who gets paid
Very little of it reaches the people owed money.
- £174,256 was received on completion for the assets, once vehicles subject to finance were removed. About £140,000 more is expected for rental rebates.
- Motor vehicles accounted for £164,411 of the price. Goodwill, the intellectual property, the websites, the phone numbers and the company records were sold for £1 each.
- HSBC Invoice Finance, the main secured lender, is owed £416,000.
- HM Revenue and Customs has a secondary preferential claim of £384,953.15, and is owed a further £169,467.93 as an unsecured creditor.
- Trade creditors are owed about £342,000.
The administrators’ estimate is a shortfall to creditors of £732,000, and they state plainly that “no return is expected to be made to unsecured creditors”. Their proposal is to dissolve the company once the work is finished.
Employees’ arrears of pay and holiday pay rank as first preferential claims, part of which are met by the Redundancy Payment Service within statutory limits.
What it means for you
If you are owed money by Atlas Bulk Carriers, you are almost certainly not getting it. The proposals put the expected return to unsecured creditors at nil, and creditors have a limited window to act: unless holders of at least 10% by value of the debt requisition a decision within eight business days of delivery, the proposals are treated as approved.
If you had work booked, the business, its records and its phone numbers now sit with Farnham Grab Services Ltd, and the administrators granted it a licence to occupy one of the trading premises for six months less one day.
Anyone with information about how the company was run can contact the joint administrators at FRP Advisory in St Albans, who have a statutory duty to report on the conduct of the directors to the Secretary of State.
None of this is a finding against anyone. An administration is an insolvency process, not a court judgment, and the figures above are the administrators’ estimates rather than audited accounts. The directors have yet to file their own statement of affairs.
The wider picture
Atlas is not an isolated case in the borough this summer. The Gazette has carried Woking insolvency notices through July and August for P J Construction (Surrey) Limited and Sweet Passion Cakes Ltd, both of which we reported when the notices appeared. Construction and its supply chain account for most of them.
Our Woking planning applications page tracks what is being built in the borough, which is the demand side of the same trade.
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