National Parts under liquidation
February 14, 2008 by Matt Brogan
National Parts, Australia’s biggest independent distributor of automotive parts (which includes AutoPro retail stores), is to be liquidated following an announcement made to staff yesterday.
About 300 jobs, mainly in warehouse, distribution and sales are to be axed. The staff are owed about $5 million in entitlements. The future of the retail staff will depend on the individual franchise operators.
KordaMentha (the guys who handled the Ansett collapse) which has been appointed administrator was quoted as saying “The viability of the company has been fatally wounded by high operating costs, a general economic tightening and continued decline in the parts industry.”
National Union of Workers general secretary Charlie Donnelly said, “It is unclear if there are enough funds to pay all entitlements and some workers are owed up to 48 weeks’ redundancy pay”.
Although in this instance unrelated, the National Parts liquidation may be the first of many auto-related liquidations to follow the Mitsubishi plant closure in Adelaide.
Print it: 
i think the ACCC has a lot to answer for for allowing this industry to go down the drain.
Well i worked there for 9 1/2 years and like every other day it was like business as usual on the 12th feb, only to be told we were closing down. It suxs because we had no warning and then realised we were not getting paid either. To make things worse we have to fight for our entitlements owed to us . One of many employees who worked there didn’t know the company owed millions (22 in fact) and as usual we found out the hard way. It just goes to show that the company couldn’t give a rats arse about the many employees who worked there for so long.
Ivan James i want to ask you this “How did you run a company and owe 22 million and sleep at night”
Michael – our sincere condolences from every one at CarAdvice on the loss of your job.
As a former Ansett employee I can appreciate your position is not a good one. Fortunately though I received some of the money I was owed. I hope you will also be as lucky.
Thanks for taking the time to comment though mate, all to often we don’t get to hear what it’s like first hand.
here here Matt. Well said.
I agree with Matt, Cheers Michael for telling us your story, and i hope you can get some, if not all what your owed.
This is a terrible blow to all the employees and families affected. This is not a criticism but I hope CA is wrong with the dire prediction in the last para…
So do we Lcat, so do we. Many of us here at CA are passionate Aussie car buffs and we’re quite concerned at the state of our local production and related industries.
Interesting times ahead.
^ Interesting and scarey.
I’m not sure what Mr Bracks terms of reference are but it might be be timely for CA to document those concerns in preparation of a submission to Mr Bracks review c’tee?
Thank Matt and Well i worked in the Qld warehouse, and on Tuesday 12th we still had faxes coming out from customers and outstanding orders to be processed. We had delivery trucks and people ringing and ordering parts they DESPERATELY needed also. We were told the company sent an email out on Monday night 11th 8:00pm saying its all over and none of our big bosses had the guts to say it in person. Mind you we might be getting our entitlements owed to us, but we can only hope this company who we have employed can provide us with every cent National Parts owes to us. Oh Ivan James is the bastard who ran and is responsible for our liquidation. I read an article and he said “Thank you to all the employees who worked for National parts but due to higher costs be cant continue trading” I like to say to Ivan “Thank you for stuffing up everyones life, and more notice would have been nice”
as usual the blue collar worker gets shafted and i but this ivan guy made sure he got looked after. personally i think that if a company goes bust and the entitelments for staff cant be met then the ceo and board members assets should be liquidated to cover staff packages, as they were the ones in control and did not try to fix things earlier.
Well that is what they are doing selling off the assets to cover staff entitlements but they need $5 mil to do so. I just wish we had more time, like all Mitsubishi staff have the end on March to look for other work, plus they will get good packages at the end
Hello All.
I am a former employee of National Parts Dandenong (23 years service), and some say luckily I got out at the right time last April (2006).
I always kept in touch with the staff at Dandenong, as only last Friday I visited the building just to say my regular hello to everyone. I did not see one sign of what was to occur on Tuesday. Even on Monday I had the lady in their accounts department call me late in the afternoon in regards to getting the account paid for the company I work at now.
I returned to the complex yesterday afternoon, approximately 28 hours after the event, and still in a state of shock and disbelief, and you have to remember I left the company over 12 months ago. Of the approx 100 employees who were there on Tuesday morning, 10 were left remaining, one of which was a storeman I am very good friends with, so he kind on let me look a little around the warehouse.
I understand your comment of it was business as usual, and then 15 minutes later the business was gone. It was like a ghose town. Customer orders waiting on the pickup counter, orders packed, some in the middle of being packed, and orders out being picked, all left where they were before all the staff were called into the lunchroom.
The office too resembled desks with peoples work left as it was when they too were called into the lunchroom.
The Directors, including Ivan were in the office, of which I had a quick chat with all of them.
Where did National Parts go wrong. I have my thoughts, and yes while the Directors do need to take some of the blame, while I worked in the sales side of the business (automatic transmission parts) I did have very close friendships with people in all areas of the business, so I always had a very good understanding of what was going on with new products, debt collection, marketing etc.
Here is one of my thoughts, and only people who have worked at National Parts will understand it. The company was booming and a real force when it was purely an automotive hard parts supplier, some say the best. So I ask, what do you all think would be the outcome if this company then made the decision to get into Car Polish, Floor Mates, Ambi Pur………
I will try to get in contact with as many of my friends who worked at National, as true friendships are priceless.
And the latest I heard is that two companies are very interested in purchasing the company, which hopefully will mean the past employees will be able to get their old jobs back.
Take Care.
This situation sucks but its happenend in the past and wil happen again.
Its hard times Michael but get dust yourself off and fight back shouting. Hope things work out with jobs and family.
It never ceases to amaze me that we pay huge salaries to Directors and CEO’s who manage to f8ck-up and survive with huge payouts for just f9cking up. Criminal how they get away with it.
I hear the bloke running the Adelaide DC has taken it upon himself to find jobs for all of his (ex)staff !!
I cannot believe how quick it all came down, i had only worked there 7 months (melb branch) and had just made the decision to stick with it after having a job interview elsewhere. The people at the top would have known it was a sinking ship and it is disgusting it was left so long with the real workers being the ones left out in the cold. I have been lucky enough to walk back into my previous employee ( in fact started the next day), i wish all my fellow staff ( missing you all already) the best of luck in thier future endeavours. To you know who, you let hundreds of people down. I hope you say a prayer for them when you go to church.
If acl had been a public company then more information would have been available for people to understand how the company operates. However, they are a private (and seemingly) secretive company that doesn\’t bother informing its workers.
If you do some digging, you find out that acl have been going down the drain for years – it\’s a wonder they lasted this long.
I just hope that the workers can get paid their entitlements – it\’s just really tough to lose your job but when you get shown the door and don\’t get paid that is just not fair – something should be done about it.
how on earth could one ivan james stuff up a monapoly
ivan james was always on oem man even in the repco days, he never had any idea about the aftermarket.
nat parts continued to buy companies but never took the right decisions in writing down the crap stock he was so silly to over pay for
mind you you can trace the problems back to the FM days under peter rogers wilson who never once made a profit in all the years he ran FM ,the only company FM acquired that did make a profit was Angus but dick head wilson and his cronnies at the time destroyed that business in 1 year,
sadly when he got the chop his cronnies did not and they continued in positions they should never have held so it was the blind leading the blind
when you think of all the companies they
ACL /FM acquried over the years it really is an absolute discrace
you dont just wake up one morning and decide wow the business is in trouble, ivan and the cronnies would have known for over 2 years they were on the rack
I worked at the Smithfield branch for 21 years, i was on annual leave when the announcement was made, i did have the opportunity to catch up with most people late on Tuesday afternoon (12/2/08)but not everyone that i knew at the site. Apparently there will be a bit of a get together on the afternoon of the 22nd of Feb at THE CROWN ON MCREDIE if any of the Smithfield crew happen to read this.
I can only hope for everybody`s sake that the administrators get this sorted out swiftly and all the employees get their true entitlements.
We can all only wish that some type of law is passed to truly protect the employees entitlements, after all, do we pay our taxes and build up our long service to be treated like this?
Hello Eugene..
This is Greg, Ex Auto Trans National Parts..
If you do not mind me asking, is this Eugene the Eugene I know, and if you are, you will know what I mean by that.
If you aren’t the Eugene I know from the Smithfield Warehouse, I apologise for troubling you.
Regards Greg
Hello Eugene..
This is Greg, Ex Auto Trans National Parts..
If you do not mind me asking, is this Eugene the Eugene I know, and if you are, you will know what I mean by that.
If you aren\’t the Eugene I know from the Smithfield Warehouse, I apologise for troubling you.
Regards Greg
Hello Greg, this is the Eugene you know/knew…now also ex National Parts.Yes mate i do know what you meant and you may well be right,i`m thinking you are referring to your comment about “hard parts”…..is that correct?.
Don`t forget to hook up with some of us next time you are in Sydney.
Take care mate
Eugene
Hello again Eugene, now that I know it is you.
When you get a moment, and if you read this message, can you please give me a quick all at work, which is APS – Automatic Parts Supply on phone number (03) 9465-6622 and I will call you back.
Good to hear from you mate. Talk Soon
Regards Greg
APS Australia
gidday i have run an auto pro store for 24 years and i really feel for you guys we all do.Greame you hit the nail on the head.on the 12th our buissiness was thrown into total chaos, but we have managed to find alternate suppliers for all of national parts products.Ivan your a ahole rot in hell
I’d only been at Nationals for a few years, the last 2 of which were spent in the call centre in Perth.
The way we were treated on those last couple of days was pretty shocking. what wasn’t made public, was that not only was the announcement just before payday for the weekly workers, those on monthly pays were also one day away from payday, which hit them even harder. (Fortunately, only 1 WA worker was in that situation)
We should have known something was going on when Ivan cancelled his state visit, or when the fax from GE was sent out the day before (but we were told all was normal).
Now I’ve taken a $5k per annum pay cut from a fairly miserly salary to begin with, because I just couldn’t afford to be choosy when looking for another job. I’m spending a lot more on fuel as well, so I may as well have lost another $2k per annum at least.
Another thing thats been on my mind a lot lately, is the “merger” with Nasons last year. We were told it was a 50/50 merger, that the 2 companies would continue operating side by side. Now Nasons is still running, and Nationals is dead and buried, and Nasons have picked up some of those profitable hard parts that were off limits to them while both companies were running. I hope the ACCC have a really good look at that deal.
I hope the directors of ACL can sleep well at night knowing what they’ve done.