Company wants to restructure itself under self-administration
The management of the textile and shoe recycler Soex has filed an application with the district court in Reinbek to open insolvency proceedings under self-administration. As the company announced, an investor is being sought. "The workforce has been informed that we want to push forward Soex's future concept with a new investor," explained restructuring expert Oliver Dankert, who has taken over management as Chief Insolvency Officer (CIO) together with Harald Ick from the Görg law firm. "We are currently setting up an orderly M&A purchasing process for this purpose." Business operations are to continue without restrictions, and wages and salaries are secured up to and including November 2024.
Soex cited the reason for filing for insolvency as the fact that traditional markets in Eastern Europe had collapsed, while competitors from Asia were simultaneously putting pressure on the markets with their excess capacity. This had led to extraordinary losses in earnings and liquidity in the short term. In the past financial years, the group of companies generated annual sales of around 460 million euros with almost 60 employees in Germany and a subsidiary in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Soex Managing Director Fred Ponath is pinning his hopes on "upcoming legal developments, such as the planned extended producer responsibility in the EU or the introduction of separate textile collections from 2025," for which the company is well prepared with a future concept. "They offer Soex an opportunity for further growth in the area of sustainable textile recycling," says Ponath.
Soex Textil-Verwertungsgesellschaft mbH (Ahrensburg) with around 130 employees, Soex Processing Germany GmbH (Bitterfeld-Wolfen) with around 300 employees, Soex Recycling Germany GmbH (Bitterfeld-Wolfen) with nine employees and I:Collect GmbH (Ahrensburg) with 17 employees are in the preliminary self-administration procedure. Dr. Matthias Wolgast has been appointed as the preliminary administrator for each of these companies. Soex Processing Middle East FZE is not affected by the self-administration procedure. No insolvency application has been filed for it.
