Ross Connock, Tom Crookham and Vesela Romagnoli of PwC were appointed joint administrators on Friday (6 November). They now oversee the Bristol-headquartered construction equipment group and its subsidiaries Molson Scotland, Molson Equipment Services Limited, Capital Equipment Finance Limited and Aggregate Processing Solutions Ltd.

Court records show the parent company filed a notice of intention to appoint an administrator on 5 November.

On appointment, the administrators completed the sale of MGL’s shares in its US businesses to a newly incorporated company, Fieldsec Hastings Limited. The deal allows the US operations, which trade through the Powerscreen regional dealership network, to continue outside the UK group. All US employees will transfer to the buyer, along with a small number of UK staff.

The administrators said weaker demand in the UK construction market had contributed to “increasing liquidity pressures”. Several options were explored to secure the business’s future, including a sale of the UK trade and assets, but no interested party could complete a deal in the time available.

The administrators will now carry out an orderly wind-down of the UK businesses, working with a number of retained employees to realise the companies’ stock and debtor balances. They said they would help affected staff make claims to the Redundancy Payments Service.

Ross Connock said: “It is regrettable that Molson Group’s UK businesses have entered administration and that this has resulted in a significant number of redundancies. We recognise how difficult this will be for those affected and their families.”

He added: “Our immediate priority is to support affected employees through the redundancy process, while working with other stakeholders to undertake an orderly wind-down of the UK businesses and maximise value from the companies’ assets. The sale of the US businesses means those operations can continue outside the UK Group, preserving the business and employment there.”

Founded in 1996, Molson described itself as the UK’s largest independent dealer of new and used equipment. It supplied machinery from brands including Hyundai Construction Equipment, Kobelco, Sennebogen and Bell Equipment, as well as Husqvarna demolition robots, and is one of Europe’s largest suppliers of Korean and Japanese-built excavators.

Its divisions served the construction, demolition, recycling, aggregate and port industries in Great Britain and the US, and it also had a technology arm. In the UK it operated from 16 locations, with more than 95 trained service engineers and, according to its website, “millions of pounds worth of parts”. It employed 345 people in the UK at the time of the appointment.