Steller Systems Ltd, a British naval architecture and marine engineering firm, is facing a winding-up petition filed by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) over unpaid debts.
The petition seeks to place the company into compulsory liquidation, effectively dissolving Steller Systems Ltd and liquidating its assets to settle outstanding obligations to creditors. The hearing was scheduled for this week in the High Court’s Chancery Division, Royal Courts of Justice, in London.
Based in Nailsworth, Gloucestershire, Steller Systems Ltd has garnered a reputation within the UK defence industry for its innovative designs and expertise. The firm’s team comprises highly skilled naval architects and marine engineers, with each actively involved in professional societies.
The company’s Managing Director is notably a Fellow of both the Royal Institution of Naval Architects (RINA) and the Institution of Marine Engineers, Scientists and Technologists (IMarEST), underscoring its established presence in the industry.
Steller Systems Ltd has also contributed to key discussions around UK naval capabilities. Recently, their Fearless design attracted attention and sparked debate as a potential solution for amphibious operations, highlighting the company’s role in shaping the landscape of UK maritime innovation.
The petition, pursued under the Insolvency Act 1985, is a serious step from HMRC as it aims to recover debts through compulsory liquidation. The result of the hearing will be decisive for Steller Systems Ltd, determining whether the firm can continue its operations or face dissolution.
Unfortunately there will be a lot more of this.
The level of companies that have never recovered from lockdown coupled with labour pancaking the economy is decimating the construction industry.
HMRC have clearly been told by some very stupid people to get aggressive. No point in being over aggressive with businesses who are struggling. Liquidation rarely yields anything at all for the creditors.
I am no lover of. Labour , infact my contempt for Labour is approaching that of Tories but to say that Labour’s handling of the economy is pancaking after 3 months versus 14 years of utter incompetence by Tory chancellor after Tory chancellor is rich to say the least!!
The effect of Wet-Weekend-Starmer’s negativity on the economy has been profound.
Three months of trash talking things economic require a special level of stupidity – all deals are in the deep freeze.
There are a huge number of companies that depend on deal flow.
If anyone doesn’t understand that go and work with Rachel Reeves – she doesn’t understand anything.
The budget is coming as a shock. People need a few days to unpack things: then they will change their behaviour onto the new track. Overall the budget is designed to reduced incentives for wealth gain through short term ‘rent seeking behaviour’ ( e.g. accumulating and hoarding scarce assets like land and property) and to encourage longer term investment in manufacturing, constructions, skills, people and technology while ensuring that the poorest continue to have enough to play an active part in the economy as consumers. The budget is also designed to increase economic activity by getting inactive people into work. Reducing the wait for a scan, increasing the minimum wage, subsidising bus fares, keeping a lid on fuel duty, increasing the hours carers can work without being penalised all make it easier for people to look for a job. The Federation of Small businesses have said that changes in employers NI contributions mean a reduction of £10k NI bill will be a huge help for small firms. Reeves says 865, 000 businesses will pay no NI contributions at all. The govt intends to reduce business rates from 2026. As a nation we will rely more on earned income and less on unearned income. Its a 5-10 year project to intended to create a more stable and sustainable economy.
Riiight…..
Unfortunately this means the end of the size of family farm that is viable that is worth £3-5m but makes £50-100k annual profit. Where is the £800k coming from?
It also means that multi generational SME’s are liquidated rather than duties paid. It is easy to make an, on paper, very valuable company that doesn’t emit much cash. I own a few of those. HMRC is the largest shareholder in all of my companies already. I’m shutting two down as a direct result of the budget and not rehiring for roles in others – things are deathly quiet out there we are in survival mode just like 2008.
My accountant said to me a month ago ‘it is as bad as 2008 the only difference is there is no government support’
Since 2016 investment cash has been in very, very short supply in London. Now it has become like finding hens teeth.
As you say things adjust – adjust away from the UK. Investment requires real profits. Money will move to where real profits are.
The rich move to where they can keep their money. There has been a general exodus form London that predated Reeves’ clown show budget but it had picked up in pace since it vacant clear how Red this government is.
A good friend works at a very namely private bank and he is clear that most of his work into the election and after it was moving assets out of the UK. Yup, it is that bad, anything else is wishful thinking.
Individuals adapt to circumstances. The emigrés you mention have prioritised wealth and will try to find a new home with a congruent culture. That’s their choice. I see Man Utd have just recruited a new Portuguese manager so there are still talented people who think the UK is land of opportunity.
I don’t know much about farming but I take your general point ( my unused pensions might push my estate into inheritance tax ) but as they say, naked I came into tho world and naked I will leave it. I’m sure my children will manage. Jeremy Clarkson mouthing off suggests to me that Ms Reeves has made a good move.
For yourself, I wish you well adapting to the changes. As the saying goes, as one door closed another door opens?
My reading of the Runes is that after a turbulent period the country is resolving its post WW2 end of empire identity crisis, is coming to terms with geographic reality and is homing in the optimum economy for a healthy nation in terms the balance between trading, manufacturing, construction, IT, media, pharma, defence sectors etc. We have decided we don’t want to be a Liz Truss Singapore entrpôt hub and would rather have a more European style ‘social democracy’. The challenge is that the EU has declined to acknowledge its Christian heritage and is therefore weakening. That same rejection of Christianity is the root of the problem the US has with itself. As de Tocquevill said ( concerning church attendance) , America is great because America is good, and the moment America ceases to be good it will cease to be great.
Both manufacturing and IT are largely exported to off shore since any UK business decision making takes no interest in sovereign capabilities or UK employment. Obviously those already in foreign ownership take less still. Media and Pharma are already internationally optimised so minimal UK employment. Since Construction customers may continue to want a building in the UK, for a while, that must be largely on site. However the Pandemic showed that a lot of jobs could be done from home so employees are reluctant to return to the office. Many companies will decide to run with less overhead office space so commercial building will reduce and office to residential conversion is well established. More fitting out and interior design than civil engineering and design/building.
So is Trading enough to grow GDP, with increased costs to Private Equity businesses? I doubt it.
Will £2.9Bn for Defence create growth, or is it just enough to solve overdue issues left by the previous government?
Weakness in the GBP suggests the markets think the Budget is wishful thinking.
Don’t disagree with the trends you mention or the priorities of multi-nationals. My reading of the £2.9b is that it is emergency first aid; similar to other one off amounts to other sectors like education and health.
Reeves is attempting to implement the economic ideas of a newer generation of economists, many of whom are women. Whether it will work only time will tell. The way I see things the electorate decided that whatever we were doing wasn’t working – we were headed south- so we should try something different…get free of the EU and then get rid of the Tories. Got to have faith in democracy and the good sense of the people. Vested interests are kicking up a fuss of course but that doesn’t mean one way or another whether the ideas will work.
I’d suggest reading Dan Neidle’s recent thread on X about the family farm nonsense….
It applies to very few family farms…and well above £2m….and its easily avoided….
Long story short….those complaining about it need to get better professional advice….
And funnily enough Neidle is in that business, though not much respected…
I have university training in economic do I can read between the lines of her budget , Your comments are nothing but right wing , blinkered hypocritical nonsense. Ido not agree with all of it.
First she is clearing up your right wing mess. That is a fact see the OBR.
Did she slash the defence budget, NO. That was Osbourne.
Did she actually pancake the economy, NO , that was TRUSS
Has she left a black hole for someone else to clear up, NO THST WAS HUNT and SUNAK
I wonder if people live in the real world. As someone who left school at 16 in 1950 I too do understand politics .Of course it was those scheming Tories who invented Covid encouraged Putin to invade ( thus causing petrol and food to rise in price ), Probably Set up a factory to produce rubber dingeys ,encouraged mass migration etc etc etc. One wonders if there is anything they were not responsible for.Oh of course the Peace dividend that almost every Western country took .I am not saying they were perfect ( I have voted Labour once and we got Tony Blair ) but a balanced view would be nice.
Wow, I never realised they were so busy!!
Now I understand why the country is a pot hole infested mess. They were busy elsewhere.
Showing my age 16 in 1960 only 80.
Tsr2 ,Weapons of mass destruction, 45 mins, Kelly, Dodgy dossier “no more money ” Gold given away “. Just to say a little balance please. Faults on both sides
I could point out dodgy Covid contracts to mates a totally unnecessary track and trace led by an incompetent clueless person, party gate etc .
There was plenty of balance in all of my posts .
Sorry I missed that, Where was the acknowledgement all parties made mistakes. This is my last post but hope to see yours pointing out
You clearly did
“ I am no lover of. Labour , infact my contempt for Labour is approaching that of Tories”
Also my last post on the matter!!
It doesn’t take much or long to pancake the economy, look at Truss, spook the markets and wipe billions off in days. The Countries debt is 92% of gdp and the interest alone a hundred billion a year, if the economy catches even a slight cold bankruptcy is around the corner. This is what our politicians of all colours have done.
I agree, but without a doubt the current mess is down to the previous government 14 years of mismanagement and incompetence.
I would be saying that if it had been Labour as well.
I am a firm believer we should not be looking at tax cuts of any kind until the countries debt is substantially payed down and on a downward trajectory.
Further the 2.% cut in NI was a reckless attempt to buy votes at the economies expense and labour’s pledge regarding taxes with self harm.
We are in a situation where whoever is in government have little room to manoeuvre.
Although I agree Starmer and Reeves statement prior to the budget way over did it, Johnson style cakism would have been recklessly dishonest.
Labour “pancaking the economy”? You cannot be in any way serious. The Tories were found deeply wanting after 14 years of incompetence and outright lies. That includes significant cuts in key defence areas with the direct replacement either years down the road, or simply forgotten about.
If we’re going to judge Labour, as we should do, same as any political party, at least give them a statutory term in office, not merely a few months, picking up the pieces after the shambles of the last lot.
You mean unlike the £44+Bn lie that Starmer and Reeves have told?
Or Wes-Trust-Me-Streeting ‘more money isn’t the silution for the NHS but a few weeks later £25Bn more to waste on being rude to patients and neglecting them has been made available.
Staffing levels arranged to suit staff and not patient needs. 4 day health service that shuts down on Friday lunch time and is left to terrified under qualified junior doctors to try and manage.
The was a moment when Streeting admitted things were broken and cash wasn’t the solution that most people who have had the misfortune to set foot in a one of our third world NHS hospitals agreed with him.
You do realise that if you want a fully 7 day NHS you’d need to hire significantly more staff… which means a lot more money. You can’t have your cake and eat it. It’s lack of investment that is causing the NHS to become less productive. Out of date IT, hiring people just to shuffle around beds in the corridor rather than building more capacity. Operating like that is a death spiral. NHS leaders have been warning for years this would happen.
If you look at any sensible resource per head calculation the NHS is in the middle ground of developed countries with far poorer outcomes. The issue isn’t actually money. Ok there is an issue with some of the services on offer but that is a very small part of the issue.
Measures of resource utilisation in the NHS are absolutely terrible.
The quality of multi disciplinary care is actually shockingly bad in our mega ‘efficient’ hospitals.
To understand what is wrong with the mindset you only have to look at the expectation that ambulances wait outside A&E until the unit deigns to admit the patient…bonkers interview from a well known consultant last week… NHS was tying Police and ambulance service in knots looking after patients whist not dealing with the problems in front of them.
So in NHS logic you buy 3x ambulances and employ crews to deal with that? That is proper through the looking glass thinking. Push the problem somewhere else.
Getting patients out of hospital is hard because of the games played with not issuing discharge plans well in advance – they don’t want to issue them so they can’t be torn to shreds by relatives…non feedback loop thinking…patient is bad…relatives are worse. So unsurprisingly even if you don’t need any care assistance at the other end it is painful arriving at the exit. And it has little to do with places in social care which is an overused excuse.
If you want to fix this system you actually need to work backwards. Most consultants acknowledge that you could free a lot of bed hours if a) discharge paperwork was done efficiently b) discharge care planning was done with energy c) there was any real hospital wide focus on getting patients well enough to leave.
I could go on and on but this is mostly basic admin that would commercially get fixed in days and weeks. No director would or should last with the kind of mess on their watch.
It doesn’t cost significant sums to do this at all. The barriers cited can mostly be bulldozed by empowered boards.
A Trust tried to hire me as a non exec board member – I went to a series of meetings to see if I could help.
They were all totally incapable of running a board meeting other than parroting nonsense about resources, NHS England, Care Quality Commission……idiots incapable of reasoned critical thinking parroting groupthink. Not one of them could hold down a job in a real business.
The solutions are blindingly obvious the strength of the system to throttle any kind of innovation is also blindingly obvious.
The biggest problems are attutudinal.
I walked away to do something useful for a charity with that time.
As they say a fish rots from the head.
That and sacking about 15% of the NHS workforce who are totally unemployable in the real world.
But nobody will actually tear the temple of NHS apart as it is a holy cow. So it is destined to fail.
I’m no fan of Labour, bloody idiots, ‘but’, I think we have to give Wes a chance to reform the NHS.
He’s asking the right questions and making
the right noises at least. We haven’t had a health Secretary doing that for many years!
I suspect he will be frustrated in his efforts unfortunately. Jonathan (of this parish) has gone into this subject in depth on many occasions, a combination of ‘massive’ additional funding and reform is needed, or we need to cut our cloth and expectations accordingly.
A great friend of mine has a daughter who’s a senior midwife, she left the NHS after many years because she can’t stand the politically correct culture anymore.
Great example, she wasn’t allowed to adminter a needed ‘stern bollocking’ to junior nurses anymore, because ‘shouting’ is apparently detrimental to their mental health….
The last straw for her, was being informed that she couldn’t talk to a junior nurse without a chaperone being present, as said nurse had put in a formal complaint for ‘ being shouted at’…..
She’s now in private practice, getting better pay and better hours and enjoying life again.
It seems to me that we approaching the last chance saloon for the NHS, get it right, or it will be disoved and replaced by some ‘quasi’ private practice, mish mash of state and insurance system.
A sort of two speed US style system, with state run free (best of luck to you) hospitals and BUPA on steroids hospitals.
Interesting post. My sister in law was a hospital ward sister who left the NHS for similar reasons; the inability to speak out about sloppy practice for fear of being accused of discrimination. Many NHS staff choose to work in the private sector or for agencies. Loyalty and commitment are a problem.
The NHS is full of individuals who are well trained and caring but they work in an oppressive culture characterised by something of a defensive bunker mentality. As befits its Bevanite origins, and complete with choirs the NHS is the worlds largest Welsh chapel. Constant government pressure for ‘productivity improvements’ doesn’t help. They pay to recruit more doctors but pay for it by cutting the capital budget so they have to share stethoscopes ( well scanners actually)! The NHS is like a huge unbalanced computer which is ‘thrashing’. Because it is such a large and complex machine tuning for performance is too difficult. The attempt to build a single central database for medical records, not to improve service to patients but rather to facilitate AI for the pharma companies, was always doomed to fail. Streeting’s idea to devolve care to neighbourhoods and to create an arms service oriented architecture is better. Have to ask, has no-one in govt ever bought anything on the web? Diabetes is a disease which results from constant fear for survival. Organisations can suffer from it just as individuals do. What the staff in the NHS need is psychological freedom – Isiaih 4: for the yoke of his burden, the rod of his oppressor, you have broken as on the Day of Midian. When you are faced with a complex problem in mathematics the advice is to break it down into smaller more easily solved components. Food for thought?
Firstly, I think the ‘black hole’ figure was £22Bn rather than £44 Bn. And I’m fairly sure that the OBR more or less agrees with that number- and also had some strong words to say to Jeremy Hunt about the Tories not submitted a yearly spending review since 2021, which hampered theirs and others’ (including government departments and the opposition/new incumbents) efforts in managing in-year spend without major changes to forecasts. I’m not seeing the lie.
I’ll be the first to say that I’m not a natural Labour voter, but something needed to change, because what the Tories were doing was tanking the economy. It remains to be seen if they’ve made the right choices, but let’s not pretend that they’re crashing something that was running great, or even just OK.
As far as the NHS goes, anything less than a major reassessment and re-scoping is just a sticking plaster at this point, and I don’t think any political party has it in them for that.
Liquidators will keep the process going for many years until all assets are exhausted ….. It’s what liquidators do!
Utter nonsense! What pancaked the economy is 14 years of incompetent Conservative rule combined with Covid and Brexit! Because of Brexit we will never fully rebuild our economy and that is only exacerbated by our inability to commit to national infrastructure projects like HS2 due to Nimby and Baby-boomer concerns about change. Labour might have their issues but to suggest they are the root cause of our national problems is absurd!
I hope I live long enough to see the day when we wake up to our self inflicted national problems and rejoin the EU…plus witness the national celebrations on that day!
Also FYI lockdown however painful was necessary, we were facing a national health crisis with a virus that had a very high mortality rate for the middle aged part of the population.
I’m no fan of BREXIT but that isn’t for here.
Lockdown wasn’t as necessary as made out – all the proper analysis was that it did more damage and the deaths occurred anyway by cross infection by the time COVID was rampant.
The HS2 problem is two utterly stupid decisions:-
– increasing the running speed from 186mph [TGV speed] to 250mph doubled the cost as the grades, tunnel clearances, track bed and bridge engineering multiplied in complexity.
– failing to use existing alignments and grasping the nettle they two housing estates needed to be rebuilt elsewhere also added massively to the bill.
– there was never any credible business case to built to Birmingham for 250mph.
– there is a business case to build train paths on alignments running at 140-189mph.
The HS2 thing is as simple as that. Two stupid fudges and some mega projects bolted into it because…
The conservatives had no discernible economic policies other than Osboune costing the economy a bundle by failing to invest, Doris and Rishi throwing money around, Hunt and Rishi being sensible but utterly uninspired.
The NI was totally crazy at a time when anything and everything should have been directed at growth.
More nonsense and ill informed at that!
HS2 is not about running faster trains IT IS ABOUT NETWORK CAPACITY!
The current network is maxed out and has no more capacity, building HS2 massively increased network capacity by moving express services onto a dedicated line freeing up the current main lines for local commuter services.
As for your guff about lockdown…totally wrong! Stop spreading myths that you have found on Facebook groups!
Profit of £643k in year to 31/12/2023 with dividends paid of £492k. Not much left in the company.
It doesn’t seem to have a portfolio of successful designs, unlike BMT.
Crazy to pay that level of divi. They probably overpaid the executives too.
Agreed
True but stat statements tell you very little of the underlying health of a company.
You have to wonder with those figures why they’ve not paid their tax….
It’s always the first person you pay…because its the one person who can really take action against you…
Have Steller Systems Ltd actually had a Ship or Ships built from their designs?.
They had a couple of minor things, like our minesweepers using their inflatable USV launchers, but never an actual ship.
This is just the market working. The employees have skills and will have no trouble getting another job in a more successful company.
This is a pity, they design really good looking ships, especially the bridge design.
At least we should let them keep going until they make a T83 concept, I was looking forwards to that. Just trying to imagine the crazy design they’d come up with?
Based off the Fearless hull, perhaps?
Whilst I mourn the passing of every enterprise – a huge amount of hard work goes into setting up and running any mid sized company that survives for a number of years.
How would they have anything to add to a large complex warship design when they have never had a mid sized warship design that was built?
I wasn’t really talking about Steller’s actual contribution to defence, which was patchy at best, just that they made some really cool looking concepts.
Spartan was the most rounded in principle of the T31 designs, it just had nowhere to be built.
Fearless changed the conversation around MRSS and the ideas are being incorporated for a more heavily armed CONOPS in MoD thinking.
They are one of those companies, like Reaction Engines, that never gets much done but produce curiosities that interest me a lot because they are outside the usual run of the mill military procurement hoops.
This is the fine line we walk between keeping a well rounded national ship building and design capability going I suppose…
Do we make T32 and T83 brand new designs, with all the developmental risk that entails, or do we go the safer and cheaper route of T31 batch 2 and make T83 a derivative of T26.
One route costs more ( potentially billions more), but keeps the design houses busy, the other reques far less design input.
The age old question, what’s the defence budget for, defending the country, or supporting industry??
I think we need a mix of both approaches for new ships, T32 should just be a batch 2 T31 to reduce design time, keep production moving quickly and reduce risk (as well as reducing training, logistical constraints, etc), we are in desperate need of new frigates as the T23s are all on life support.
We can afford to take our time with the T83 design, the T45s have much more life left in them (it’s hard to wear out a ship that never goes to sea) and even if we had the design tomorrow we wouldn’t be able to build anything for many years yet. The T26 and T31 also just have much greater air defence potential than the T23 so can take some of the burden off of T45, Artisan and CAMM was a big upgrade for T23 but Mk41 VLS cells open up so much more potential.
Good points. We have certainly taken far to long in this Country at every level adjusting from adjusting from being a World wide power to being a more limited regional power with, far smaller forces meaning changed focus, expectations, budgets and thus limited marketplace for suppliers that brings with it. Lost a lot of talent and good businesses along the way but the total lack till recent times, of consistent and ongoing orders over short sighted boom and bust often dictated by 5 year political terms and endless committees and reviews has been unnecessarily destructive to this sector.
One thing is for sure once the design for T-83 is revealed this place is going to light up on those design choices. I get the feeling a T-26 derivative in particular is going to be seen by a lot of people here as a compromise too far.
Great shame about this, businesses of this type are rarely going to be continually secure because they can’t really create a secure supply of work but like most in the create business rely on many circumstances outside of their control and a strong element of luck. When I was active I remember many a design business that were once top of their tree within a decade being on their last legs. It’s vital in this particular design and engineering sector that it’s not an unpredictable order market place as in boom or bust or even extremely competent businesses will just go under as potential work is always highly competitive and relatively narrow in nature even if they have wide ranging export expertise in their locker. They need to be given some leeway as a result, though don’t know the exact situation around this particular business but to lose the talent within would be self defeating to the economy potentially.
One of the UK defence, industrial weaknesses, is its lack of depth: this won’t help.
If they’re a Design House then they can start up tomorrow as Steller Systems 2025 Ltd, there’ll be few physical assets except IP, most of which will be inside people’s heads.
Buy the physical stuff from the liquidator/administrator ‘in the interests of an efficient administration’ I.e. their fees!
To all commentators on this article: I thought this was military website, not a political forum?