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Rescue plan for Irish Fairy Door company approved

The company entered the SCARP process
The company entered the SCARP process

A rescue plan has been approved for the company behind the Irish Fairy Door brand.

A new two page document lodged with the Companies Office confirms that a rescue plan was approved on Monday of this week.

This follows a meeting of members and a meeting of creditors on Monday.

On May 2nd, accountant, Joe Walsh was appointed as 'Process Advisor' to CEBL Ltd and was tasked with drawing up the rescue plan.

The role of 'process advisor' is part of a new Small Company Administrative Rescue Process (SCARP) that has been introduced to provide a quicker and more affordable restructuring option to small and micro businesses here.

The Irish Fairy Door company’s miniature fairy doors are enjoyed by children in around one million households worldwide and has enjoyed an endorsement in the past from Kourtney Kardashian.

A spokeswoman for the Irish Fairy Door Company (IFDC) declined to comment on Tuesday.

However, at the outset of the SCARP process last month she said that the directors were "very confident the company will be able to successfully exit the SCARP process within a short period of time".

"The company made the decision to enter into the SCARP process," she said.

She added that the SCARP process "allows small companies a period of time to restructure its debts with a view to ensuring the company can trade as a going concern into the future".

As part of the SCARP process, a Process Advisor notifies all creditors within five days of their appointment and requests the submission of claims.

The SCARP rules show that Mr Walsh had 42 days to form a rescue plan to propose to the company’s creditors and ultimately restructure the company’s debt.

Companies continue to operate 'business as usual' as the SCARP process takes place.

Now, with the approval of the rescue plan, it becomes binding seven days after statutory notices are filed - unless objected to within 21 days.

The most recent accounts for the Irish Fairy Door Company (IFDC) firm, CEBL Ltd, show that its accumulated losses had increased to €3.9m at the end of December 2020.

The company had a shareholders' deficit of €673,493 on that date.

The firm recorded losses of €268,137 for 2020, losses of €422,011 in 2019 and €1.6m in 2018.

The IFDC signed a global animation deal with Wildbrain parent, Canadian firm DHX Media, for a YouTube animation series 'Through the Fairy Door’ which went live on YouTube in July 2019.

At the time the company described the series "as a game changer for us" expecting that the animation series would deliver a 10 fold increase in revenues to the business

However, within months the Covid-19 pandemic shut down retail around the world with a company spokeswoman previously stating that "Covid-19 has had a massive impact on our bricks and mortar toy store sales".

The firm transitioned to a licensing model in 2019 and 2020 and the costs associated with changes to supply chain, staffing, and sales and marketing models contributed to losses for those two years.

At the time, sales of the company’s core product, the Irish Fairy Door made up 40pc of the company’s revenues.

- reporting by Gordon Deegan