JEWELLERY company Ortak is to close its last remaining stores and wind up its business after failing to find a buyer.
The Orkney-based company, which went into administration a year ago, will shut its four retail sites at the end of this month.
Administrators, who have been trading the business since it entered into administration in March 2013, said that they had exhausted attempts to find a buyer.
Talks with prospective buyers broke down without a sale and a decision has been taken to close the business.
James Stephen, BDO business restructuring partner and joint administrator of Ortak Jewellery Limited, said: "Despite an extensive marketing process and discussions with a number of interested parties over the past several months, it was not possible to effect a sale of the Ortak business as a whole."
The company, which was launched in Kirkwall in the late 1960s, once employed 155 staff across Scotland.
It soon became one of the major names in UK jewellery manufacturing.
The company expanded in 2010, investing £130,000 in a new outlet in Stirling and £200,000 in relocating its Glasgow store to the St Enoch Centre.
It trimmed £580,000 off its costs through a pay freeze and other measures. The amount of precious metal in its products was cut in an attempt to keep costs down.
Those measures failed and the firm fell into administration. In 2011, its operating profits slipped to £214,000, compared with £575,000 the year before, while last year it reported a loss of £77,336.
A statement on the firm's website yesterday read 'That's all folks'. Stock is being sold at a discounted price until Sunday.
Mr Stephen said: "Regretfully, manufacturing ceased on 7 March 2014 and it was necessary to make 15 members of staff at the head office in Orkney redundant. Ten members of staff have been retained to assist with the wind down. Ortak's remaining four stores will close by the end of March 2014."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article