A UK engineering company has gone into administration and lost all 53 of its employees as it has been hit by a long-running slump in demand from its major energy clients. Glacier Energy Manufacturing Limited is the latest casualty in the ongoing difficulties of parts of the UK’s engineering and manufacturing industry.
The agency for administration was appointed for the company, Glacier Energy Manufacturing, a unit of the Aberdeen-based Glacier Group, due to an “ongoing financial problem” stemming from sluggish growth in its emerging energy businesses and lower activity in the North Sea oil and gas industry. It had plants in Scotland and England, including Stockton-on-Tees.
The Glacier Group has confirmed that the decision was made after trying unsuccessfully to turn around the manufacturing business. Activity in the North Sea energy industry has been significantly reduced by the market conditions and the current fiscal environment, while the hoped-for activity in new energy markets has not materialised as expected, the company said.
The Stockton-on-Tees plant was previously known as Francis Brown, a long-established engineering company that Glacier bought into administration in August 2024, via a pre-pack deal. The company still made a lot of losses in spite of investments and restructuring.
Administrators say the company’s trading conditions started to deteriorate just after incorporation. As customers became more interested in repairs and maintenance of the existing infrastructure, they placed less emphasis on large-scale capital expenditure projects. This change had a major impact on the volume of engineering and manufacturing business undertaken on a large scale, affecting revenues.
The company started incurring losses in December 2024, according to the report. Directors sought to cut costs, such as closing a site in Rotherham in 2025, that led to 20 redundancies. But they were not enough to make it profitable and the bottom line eventually fell apart.
Teneo Financial Advisory’s joint administrators Adele MacLeod and Clare Boardman have been tasked with running the administration process. In their initial report, the creditor recoveries it says it expects will be restricted as at the time of its collapse the company owed around £133,000.
Glacier Energy Manufacturing has halted trading, but the Glacier Group has said it will keep running its other businesses, such as mechanical solutions and inspection services. The group continues to offer engineering, repair, refurbishment and specialist industrial services to customers in the energy sector.
The company’s failure follows pressure on the engineering and manufacturing sector of the UK economy and high levels of insolvency as businesses struggle to adapt to new market conditions, cost pressures and investment patterns in traditional industrial sectors.
All jobs lost as Scot engineering firm goes into administration. The GOV.UK website provides a “Commentary – Company Insolvency Statistics April 2026” on the statistics of company insolvencies.
