Administrators for a recycling firm based in Pontllanfraith are confident they can rescue the company with a new owner.
Begbies Traynor say they are confident of finding a buyer for Plastics Sorting Ltd, which entered administration at the beginning of this month.
There have been 40 expressions of interest registered with Begbies Traynor’s Cardiff office with 32 parties receiving a sales pack and around a dozen viewings have since been conducted.
The deadline for offers in writing is 5pm on Friday, February 17.
David Hill, partner at Begbies Traynor Cardiff, said: “We are very hopeful that we will receive offers, have something on the table worth considering, and subsequently achieve a sale.
“We will sit down next week, see what has been forthcoming, and start negotiating. But at this stage we cannot speculate on who the buyer might be or how long a deal may take to complete.”
Mr Hill, who has praised the extensive coverage in the regional and trade media for helping generate so many inquiries, is supervising the ongoing affairs of Plastics Sorting Ltd, based on Blackwood Business Park, Pontllanfraith.
The company describes itself as “a groundbreaking collaboration between the experience of the private sector and the innovation of the community sector” with the support of the Welsh Government and the Charity Bank. It runs the largest capacity PET (polyethylene terephthalate) reprocessing plant in the UK.
It employed 30 people including 15 to 20 agency staff and had an annual turnover of around £1.2 million. Three staff were retained to advise the administrators with five staff made redundant upon the company being placed administration.
The services of agency staff were not retained and a number of redundancies had been made before the administrators’ appointment.
The recycling plant was officially opened in May 2010 and is licensed to process up to 24,000 tonnes of PET bottles a year.
The company was given two grants totalling £1.3 million, from the Welsh Government to develop the facility on the 91,500 sq ft site at Blackwood Business Park.
The start-up was hailed at the time by former Environment Minister Jane Davidson.