The Carshalton firm's statement of affairs leaves nothing for unsecured creditors. Nine staff are owed £330,956, HMRC £650,844 and the council £14,586.
The full scale of the collapse of Zano Controls is now on the public record. The Carshalton electronics firm faces claims of £3.47m. It has assets estimated at £121,600 to meet them.
The shortfall to creditors is £3,349,108. The statement’s final line, which also writes off the company’s £100 of issued share capital, puts the total deficiency at £3,349,208.
The figures come from the company’s statement of affairs, filed at Companies House on 15 August. It is dated 24 July 2026 and signed by the director, Mark Christopher Lewin. When we reported the liquidation on 12 August, we said we would return to this document once it was filed.
Zano Controls Limited traded from Unit 1-2, Chantry Court, Plumpton Way, in The Wrythe. It was incorporated on 13 January 2010 and sold LED dimming modules to the electrical trade. Its Companies House record now reads “Liquidation”.
What there is to sell
A statement of affairs sets out two things: what a company owns, and what it owes. On the asset side, the striking figure is how little the stock is now worth.
The document values the company’s uncharged assets as follows, giving both the book value and what the director estimates they will actually fetch:
- stock: £163,364.64 in the books, estimated to realise £10,050
- plant and machinery: £16,321.16 in the books, estimated to realise £1,200
- office equipment: £6,263.54 in the books, estimated to realise £1,350
Stock is therefore expected to raise about 6p for every pound it was carried at.
The company also holds book debts of £185,000, which are subject to a fixed charge. A lender, E Capital, holds a debenture over them dated 14 February 2024 with a security value of £76,000. That leaves £109,000 from the book debts.
Add the three uncharged categories and the total assets available come to £121,600.
Who is owed what
The claims fall into four groups.
- Trade and expense creditors (25): £1,990,928.96
- HMRC: £650,844.35, for VAT, PAYE, employee national insurance, CIS and student loan deductions
- Director loan account (1): £497,979.00
- Employees (9): £330,955.71 in total, split between a preferential claim of £29,931.58 and an unsecured claim of £301,024.13
The separate creditor schedule lists 28 entries totalling £3,215,752.31. That figure excludes the employees, who are not named individually.
Most of the trade and expense money is not owed to suppliers at all. Seven private individuals appear in that schedule, owed £1,694,456.43 between them, or about 85% of the trade and expense total. One of them is owed £630,312.11. We are not naming them: they are private individuals, and their home addresses appear alongside the sums.
Sutton Council is a creditor
The schedule lists the London Borough of Sutton, at the Civic Offices on St Nicholas Way, as a creditor for £14,586.00. The document does not record what the debt is for.
Two other local names appear. Sutton and East Surrey Water is owed £681.82. Veolia, which runs the borough’s waste contract, is owed £143.76.
Nobody outside the preferential ranks gets paid
Insolvency law fixes the order in which creditors are paid, and on these figures the money runs out early.
- The £121,600 covers the employees’ preferential claim of £29,931.58 in full.
- That leaves £91,668.42 towards HMRC’s £650,844.35, a secondary preferential claim.
- HMRC is therefore short by £559,175.93.
- The statement records £0.00 available to unsecured creditors, and the prescribed part, the slice normally ring-fenced for them, as nil.
Unsecured creditors are the group that includes all 25 trade and expense creditors, the council, the director loan account and the employees’ £301,024.13. On the figures in this document, they receive nothing.
One caveat matters. A statement of affairs is the director’s estimate on a single date, not a final result. The liquidator may recover more or less than this, and may pursue claims that are not in the document.
What it means for you
If you worked there. Nine employees are recorded. If you have lost your job because an employer is insolvent, you can claim statutory redundancy pay, notice pay, holiday pay and unpaid wages from the Insolvency Service rather than from the company, using the Redundancy Payments Service. You need the case reference from the liquidator to make that claim. This route is separate from the sums in the statement of affairs, and it is the one most likely to produce money.
If the company owes you money. Claims go to the liquidator, Daniel Taylor of Fortis Insolvency Limited, 683 to 693 Wilmslow Road, Didsbury, Manchester, M20 6RE, with Peter Jones as the named contact on 0161 694 9955. The company’s registered office was moved to that address on 15 August. Submit a claim even though the statement projects nothing for unsecured creditors, because the projection is an estimate and the ranking can change if the liquidator makes recoveries.
If you are a Sutton supplier. The lesson in this document is a general one about concentration. A single customer failing took £1.99m out of 25 trade creditors at once. Several of the businesses on the list are small firms in Surrey and south London.
If you have Zano dimmers fitted. Nothing in the statement of affairs changes what we reported before. Installed products keep working. Who handles future warranty or technical support is a matter for the liquidator, and the company’s own website still carries no notice of the liquidation.
We will report the liquidator’s progress report when it is filed, including whether the assets realised anything close to £121,600.
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