“Bankrupt Steel Construction Company ASK Romein Fails to Find a Suitable Buyer: Future of 135 Employees Uncertain”

MALLE – The bankrupt steel construction company ASK Romein from Malle has not found a suitable buyer. This is confirmed by the curator who was appointed to follow up the bankruptcy. However, several parties had made offers for the factory with 135 employees, but none of them met the conditions.

ASK Romein is the Dutch steel construction company that built, among other things, the roof construction of the stadium of football club Antwerp, the new south stand at KV Mechelen and a bottling hall for the Duvel brewery. The branch in Malle filed for bankruptcy in mid-April, after the company’s three branches in the Netherlands were declared bankrupt a week earlier. A project with a data center in Denmark that went wrong and serious delays in another contract with a chemical company in the port of Antwerp killed ASK Romein.

Read also: Multiple candidate buyers for bankrupt ASK RomeinEven after the bankruptcy, the unions continued to hope for a takeover by another company. After all, the department in Malle, with ninety workers and 45 white collar workers, would have remained profitable. A few weeks later, moreover, several potential buyers had already come forward.

But no takeover bid meets the conditions, says curator Katrien Teughels now. “In the coming months we will decide on the sale of the company’s properties, which are now being negotiated.”

Heavy setback

The news is a major setback for the employees who had hoped to pick up their job again under a new owner. And there were quite a few of the 135 employees, says ACV secretary Niels Van den Houd. “Many people were not yet looking for a new job, but were waiting for a possible takeover. But with this decision it now seems to be the end of the story for them.”

The movable and immovable property of ASK Romein may now be auctioned. One of the prospective buyers, who wishes to remain anonymous, is incomprehensible about this. “There is a very good chance that individual sales will yield less than with a total offer. It is most remarkable that the trustee does not think about the staff and creditors. There is a risk of needless job losses.”