Airwork Group grounded: Russian seizures and growing debt sink NZ aviation firm
lenor/123RF
Long-established air freight company Airwork Group has been placed into receivership.
Airwork, whose New Zealand roots trace back to 1936, has a fleet of Boeing 737 freighters and operates an air freight, maintenance, and aircraft leasing business.
The company was briefly listed on the stock exchange in 2013 before a Chinese company, Zhejiang Rifa Holdings, took it private in 2017.
Brendon Gibson, Daniel Stoneman and Neale Jackson of Calibre Partners were appointed as receivers.
They said the move was made after a shareholder breached the company's banking facilities during the sale of the business.
"This step has been taken to facilitate a structured process to identify a new owner for the business," Gibson said.
"The trading performance of the business underpins the strategy to continue to trade with the support of the financiers, customers, and key suppliers with a view of immediately commencing a going-concern sale process for the New Zealand and Australian businesses and assets."
In recent years, Airwork racked up hundreds of millions of dollars of losses after five of its six Boeing 757 freighter aircraft were trapped and illegally seized in Russia after the country invaded Ukraine.
That forced the company to write off its value, and it became trapped in litigation with its insurers.
The company sold its helicopter operations in 2022 and has since sold several surplus aircraft and engines to try and stay afloat.
More recently, Airwork defaulted on a USD$83.5 million bank loan.
The company employs around 180 people in New Zealand and Australia.
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