MELBOURNE, AAP – Another 45 companies affiliated with the collapsing Grocon building empire have gone into administration.
The administrators were appointed on Monday to oversee Grocon Group Holdings Pty Ltd, Grocon Constructors (NSW) Pty Ltd and 43 other development-specific companies, many of which appear dormant.
It follows 42 Grocon companies being placed into administration late last year, with the business citing problems with its Barangaroo construction project in Sydney.
The Australian property developer giant has been battling Infrastructure NSW over permitted building heights at Barangaroo and was ordered in September to pay $1 million to secure INSW’s legal costs.
Grocon Group Holdings Pty Ltd is one of the three Grocon companies directly tied up in the Barangaroo litigation.
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KordaMentha Restructuring’s Andrew Knight, one of the three administrator appointees, said the future of the 87 Grocon companies would be decided at a meeting with creditors at the end of March.
“We are advised that no further entities are expected to enter administration and that a deed of company arrangement will be proposed to include all 87 Grocon companies,” he said in a statement.
Chairman and CEO Daniel Grollo said in November he wanted to pay the company’s creditors in full.
Grocon was founded in 1954 and has been run by three generations of the Grollo family.
It has a long history of disputes with the construction union and there have also been workplace safety problems.
In 2013, a wall at Grocon’s CUB building site in Melbourne collapsed, killing three pedestrians. The company was found to be responsible and fined $250,000.
