NOW Liquidations

Now let's go to a list no one wants to find their workplace on. The Herald has tallied the biggest liquidations of 2025 with more than 2,000 businesses folding this year and the company's affected cover almost every corner of the economy. The list is the work of the Herald's multimedia business reporter Tom Rinell and he is at the desk with us this morning. Tom, Kia ora, How are you? Good, thank you. Not so good for these businesses. Run us through your top liquidations. Yes, so I mean it's been a rough year for liquidations across the country. I mean we've had over we've had 2,278 liquidations in the year to October 31st, which I mean the only time it's been worse than that has been the GFC sort of 2010. So it's about 15 years we've been pretty good and it's gotten quite bad now. By the looks of things the biggest at the moment is a company called Hobson Green Group. Now they've got six property companies that have sort of all gone under at once, about 200 houses that they were building out west. It's about 31. 5 million dollars that they owe to creditors, which is just a significant amount to think about. And then underneath that is Smith City and Kitchen Things, obviously big retail companies that have that wide sort of birth across the country. Yeah, 21 million for both of them. So also not great. No, not great and a lot of people owed money, which is yes, the worst part about this. What about underneath that? What sort of industries does it matter actually or was it sort of widespread? It was widespread but also siloed. In a way it's a weird sort of mix between. I mean a lot of them have been in construction from my doing this. I mean I've been going through hundreds and hundreds of liquidation applications to figure out sort of who the top ones were. I think probably about 40-50 percent have been construction companies, which is a just result of that slowdown and building projects that have been going on, especially under the government, which can sort of a lot of those projects. But also retail businesses, obviously with low cons Any high profile or maybe unexpected casualties, collapses that you came across? I think Kitchen Things is actually really the one that sticks out. I mean that's a very unique part of the economy and it's obviously one that's focused on renovations and people buying things from the new kitchens and with more people sort of getting their home loans cheaper on lower rates, you'd think more people would be going into those sectors and getting those products because they've got that sort of cash display around, but I think there may be a lag from COVID when people did that then. And obviously that's a product you don't need very often, so people have delayed that and it's really bit Kitchen Things specifically. Smith City is that other one, which I mean, they're a legacy retailer, they've been around for years and that one, I think called a lot of people by surprise as well. Yeah, absolutely. Now tell us things are going to get better in 2026, please. Tom? I can't say too much. I mean the people I've spoken to from sort of the big four at PWC and Deloitte, not hesitant to say it's going to be great, but also not necessarily it's going to be a lot better either. Tom, thank you for that. Tom, renowned with us, the Herald's multimedia business reporter with the top liquidations for 25.