Luxury leather maker buys collapsed haulier Telford Transport for £320,000
What's the deal? Lloyd Baker Leather has bought Telford Transport Solutions (TTS)Dealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → for £320,000 in a pre-pack administration deal, rebranding the business as Lloyd Baker Logistics. The buyer, part of the Lloyd Baker Group, is a UK maker of luxury leather goods employing over 500 staff.
Why now? TTS entered administration on 2 October 2026 after building up about £1.2m in HMRC arrears, with total liabilities around £1.8m. HMRC served a winding-up petition on 30 September after rejecting a Time to Pay arrangement, leaving the company little time to act.
Joint administrators David Kemp and Richard Hunt of Exigen Group completed the sale the same day they were appointed. The buyer was the landlord of TTS's main site but is described as an unconnected business.
What changes? Founded in 2009, TTS provided transport, warehousing, third-party logistics, and e-commerce fulfilment from three leased Telford depots, running an operator licence for 17 HGVs and 41 trailers. All three sites keep trading, the core management team stays in place, and customer deliveries continue uninterrupted.
On the workforce: The deal transferred 64 of TTS's 69 employees to the new owner under TUPE, meaning five jobs — about 7% of staff — were not preserved. Invoice finance provider Grenke Factoring, which introduced Exigen, is expected to be repaid in full.
Why it matters? "Once the threat of a winding up petition becomes imminent, the options available to a company become much more limited," Kemp said. He added that early planning "enabled a rescue strategy despite the winding up petition, and a pre-pack sale could be completed."
The signal: The sale is a rescue, not a growth play — the £320,000 price says little about the business's value, given the liabilities left behind. It lands amid a run of failures among UK transport and logistics operators squeezed by weak freight demand and rising costs, and shows how a rapid pre-pack can preserve a regional operator and most of its jobs.
Read more: motortransport.co.uk
Image credit: Generated with Gemini
