THE company that burned scores of creditors when it terminated its Adenbrook Homes Sunshine Coast franchise agreement last month has been placed in liquidation.

Warana-based RB Douglas Pty Ltd director Bill Douglas moved to liquidate the business on February 25 in the face of massive debts. Doucon Pty Ltd, a Warana-based construction company owned by Mr Douglas, was also placed in voluntary liquidation on the same day.

Liquidator David Stimpson of SV Partners said yesterday that RB Douglas and Doucon owed unsecured creditors about $1.5 million and about $3 million respectively. On top of that, Mr Stimpson said secured creditors for both companies – including employees – were owed between $4 million and $5 million.

Mr Stimpson stressed that those amounts were “very preliminary figures”.

He said his early investigations indicated that there was unlikely to be “any significant recovery” of assets that could be used to pay RB Douglas’ unsecured creditors.

Those creditors are mostly tradesmen and suppliers.

As for Doucon’s unsecured creditors, the liquidator said there would be a “significant shortfall” in what they were owed. He said there were more than 100 RB Douglas creditors and about 220 Doucon creditors.

“All of the building contracts (for Adenbrook Homes) were assigned to the franchisor, so they’ve been taken over … there’s little likelihood of recovery from those contracts,” he said.

“And there doesn’t seem to be a large amount of physical assets for RB Douglas as well.”

Mr Stimpson said tallying Doucon’s assets was proving difficult because most of them were on the remote Groote Eylandt in the Gulf of Carpentaria.

Martin Girt, who claimed Doucon owed his Cooroy-based construction business Montgomery-Stirb about $270,000, said: “He (Mr Douglas) owes too much to too many people to simply do this,” he said.