Construction-giant Pochin has collapsed into administration.
The North West company announced the bombshell news to workers at its Middlewich headquarters this morning.
Earlier, reported how workers were being turned away from the Hilton Garden Inn project - and the associated Clayworks apartment block project - at the Smithfield site in Stoke-on-Trent.
It has since come to light that staff also downed tools at a number of other construction sites across the country, including Belong sites in Chester and Southport.
Now a statement released on behalf of the family-run company has confirmed that Grant Thornton 海角视频 LLP has been appointed as the administrator to eight entities within the Pochin's Group of companies.
The statement said: " In the past year the construction business, with a new management team on board, had established a platform for growth, developed excellent client relationships and secured a pipeline of profitable new work and opportunities.
"However, despite that renewed optimism for the future, the legacy issues from earlier contracts became too great a burden leading to difficult trading conditions.
"The Group’s board explored a number of options in an effort to preserve the Group’s trading status over recent months, including injections of significant levels of capital from shareholders and the sale of the Group’s property portfolio.
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"Despite these efforts, the impact of the challenges have proven insurmountable and the difficult decision was reached by the directors to place a number of entities in the group into administration. This includes the main trading entities of Pochin’s Ltd, Pochin Construction Ltd and six other subsidiaries."
A number of redundancies are expected take place following the announcement.
Pochin's was founded in the 1930s as a property and construction business. Over the years, it has been involved in a number of high-profile construction projects in the North West.