A luxury chocolate company in Wales has gone into liquidation.
Nomnom Chocolate, based in Carmarthenshire, west Wales, was set up Liam Burgess when he was still a teenager.
Booth Insolvency confirmed it had been appointed as liquidators of Chocolate Farm Products Ltd at a meeting of creditors earlier in July. The company, which was formerly called NomNom Chocolate, is now being wound up.
Details of a meeting of creditors were reported in the London Gazette and the filing has now been updated to show that Chocolate Farm Products, trading as Nomnom Chocolate, is in liquidation.
WalesOnline, which along with Business Live is part of the Reach media group, understands that the liquidators are hoping to sell the brand name NomNom and that former owner Mr Burgess is just one of the interested parties looking to buy the brand name.
Mr Burgess told the website that the NomNom brand and chocolate "continue to exist and will continue to conquer the chocolate world once we are through the nightmare that has been the Pemberton factory".
Mr Burgess maintains that the brand will be unaffected by the liquidation. The chocolate is still being sold online.
Mr Burgess was just 19 when he started his handmade chocolate business in 2013 thanks to a £4,000 loan from the Prince's Trust, initially working out of a caravan at the bottom of his mum's garden.
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In that first year, he made around 50,000 chocolate bars and things slowly took off.
Between 2014 and 2016 it was given public cash via the Welsh Government's Job Growth Wales fund.
In 2016, NomNom staff flew to a Madagascan cacao plantation to get a better understanding of the supply chain of the chocolate they made. Mr Burgess said taxpayers' money was not used for the trip.
After production was moved to a neighbouring farm, the company expanded further by moving across the road to Bronyscawen - the site of the former Pemberton's factory.
By this point the company employed 18 people and made 2,000 bars every day.
His unique flavour combinations, including bara brith and blueberry gin, gained a popular following and his bars even make their way into the hands of David Cameron in Number 10.
The long-term goal was to buy outright the former Pemberton's site, yet that plan was never realised.
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In February 2019, NomNom Chocolate changed its name to Chocolate Farm Projects Ltd with a registered address at Sentinel Accountants in Usk.
Today, the premises outside Llanboidy is deserted, with all outbuildings shut up and abandoned.
NomNom’s social media accounts have not been updated or posted on since 2018.
At one point the company employed around 20 people, but according to one local man that had reduced to one by this summer.
The man, who did not wish to be named, told WalesOnline: “I think the writing was on the wall earlier this year. There were fewer and fewer people working there and things were being moved out of there.
“About a month ago I think they closed up entirely. There’s nobody there now.”
The entrance to the site is blocked off and a sign on one of the gates says ‘Sorry, closed’. This is permanently in place and the pink NomNom flags that once flew above the gates have been taken down.
Another entrance is blocked off by traffic cones and a ‘No Entry’ sign.
The NomNom website still offers chocolate for sale. However, all telephone numbers at the former Llanboidy site have been disconnected and are no longer in use.
Mr Burgess said: "NomNom lives on as a chocolate and will carry on but the Chocolate Farm Project, which was anything to do with the whole Pemberton factory in Llanboidy, is no more."
A Welsh Government statement said: "We provided Jobs Growth Wales and apprenticeship support to NomNom Chocolate Ltd between 2014 and 2016 and the company fulfilled all commitments to staff and contractual obligations to us resulting from that investment."