A herb farm which supplies and packs herbs for major supermarkets has gone into voluntary administration.
Freshzest and affiliated company Spicezest were placed into administration by director and owner Robert Hayes last month, putting 60 jobs at risk and leaving more than 100 other creditors out of pocket.
The companies have farming operations near Lismore, in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales as well as Koonwarra in Victoria's South Gippsland.
Melbourne insolvency company, Hall Chadwick has been appointed as the administrators of the companies, and held the first creditors meeting last week.
The herb business supplied Woolworths with Woolworths-branded fresh herbs, as well as to independent supermarket IGA.
As well as growing its own herbs it also bought and packed herbs from other farmers to supply supermarkets across Australian states excluding Northern Territory and Western Australia.
Employees and creditors out of pocket
Gaurav Mishra, a Senior Associate at Hall Chadwick, said they were working with 60 employees who were potentially owed entitlements.
Mr Mishra provided no estimate of the entitlements that employees were owed and did not say if these would be paid to the employees in full.
It is understood that 23 of the 30 employees at the Pound Creek herb farm in Gippsland, Victoria have been stood down, and have received letters from the administrator informing them that the company had gone into voluntary administration.
Mr Mishra said that in addition to employees being owed entitlements, approximately 96 unsecured creditors were also involved with the struggling herb business, being owed a combined $480,000.
An additional 16 secured creditors were also owed funds; however, Mr Mishra said Hall Chadwick did not have an estimate on what this figure was.
Struggling business up for sale
"We are in the process of conducting an investigation and will have another creditor meeting in three weeks' time," Mr Mishra said.
"We are continuing to trade the business for now, but we have advertised the business for sale."
ABC contacted Freshzest for comment, but the company declined to comment beyond what Hall Chadwick had communicated.
Woolworths and IGA had also not provided a comment at the time of publication.
