The troubled Petersfield based security card printer, which was sold on 23 May via a pre-pack, was heavily loss-making and owed around £3.4m when it failed, including £683,273 to unsecured trade creditors and £331,955 to HMRC.

However, it was former parent Tall Group that was left with the largest unsecured debt of £2.4m, including £929,095 owed to Tall Security Print and £1.5m owed to Checkprint.

This was in addition to the £270,000 equity and more than £1.1m trading losses recorded by the ID Data in the two full years trading (2010 and 2011) since its acquisition by Tall Group in December 2009.

According to the administrators report, ID Data made a net loss of £225,263 in 2010, rising to a loss of £919,223 in 2011, on turnover of £5.5m and £5.4m respectively. The estimated losses for the first quarter of 2012 were £300,000.

As a result of the company's increasing losses, Tall Group decided not to provide further financial support, meaning insolvency was inevitable, with the two options then being administration or closure.

Tall Group managing director Martin Ruda told PrintWeek: "We actively engaged with professional advisors to look at the options available to us following the losses sustained in 2011 and continuing losses in 2012.

"The accumulated losses and the size of the inter-company debt meant that our attempts to identify a potential acquirer for the business in a share sale were unsuccessful.

"Our options were to either place the business into administration or shut it down. Faced with these options, the best solution for our employees and unsecured creditors was to place the company into administration having identified a pre-pack with the CPI Group."

According to the administrators report, ID Data's assets were valued at between £237,000 and £861,000 by Edward Symmons and the business was eventually sold to CPI for a revised offer of £524,000.

The prescribed part of the company's net property set aside for unsecured creditors is estimated at £176,171 and the administrators also believe that there may be sufficient assets to enable a further distribution to unsecured creditors other than via the prescribed part.

According to Ruda the insolvency of ID Data has not affected supplier relationships at other group companies. "There are one or two creditors that are also suppliers of the Tall Group and we are continuing to work with them within our existing relationship," he said.