Infrastructure contractor Daly International has called in administrators after it failed to keep its head above a tide of millions in debt. The 25-year-old company, which has offices around Australia and in the UK, has had contracts with the NBN, Vodafone and Optus.
Its services have included project delivery, engineering, design, property, town planning, construction and project management.
Daly has appointed Peter Dinoris of Artemis Insolvency as administrator. He has promptly sacked all 80 of Daly’s staff, and cleaned out all of its business premises, which included offices in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth.
While details are scant, Artemis said it has so far received proof of $5.1 million owed to unsecured creditors, including employee entitlements at a total $2.1 million.
The creditors also include a host of IT and telecommunication companies, including Huawei, which had an agreement with Daly that “involves a number of sensitive matters”, reports CRN. Secured creditors include ANZ Bank and cashflow finance provider Hermes Capital.
Daly’s portfolio included a $27.7 million project with NBN Co to deliver fibre to multi-dwelling units in Brisbane, the Gold Coast and WA. Daly also designed NBN fibre networks in Sydney and Melbourne, as well as tasks for Ericsson’s fixed wireless component of the NBN.
NBN Co also revealed it is purchasing 15,051km of copper cabling, to be used building out fibre-to-the-node (FttN) connections to some newly built premises, also revealing that a portion of its hybrid fibre-coaxial (HFC) network will involve new cabling laid by NBN Co.
In response to Senate Estimates questions on notice, published this week, NBN Co said it is connecting newly built premises with FttN rather than fibre to the premises (FttP) in some areas where the surrounding premises are already served by FttN.
Shadow communications minister Michelle Rowland lashed out against the Government over the copper purchase, saying it was “enough to wrap around Australia”, and far more than the 1800km announced back in 2015.