Creditors of Jomel, which traded as The Oceans Group, met on Friday, 30 July. At the meeting, Jomel was expected to go into liquidation. However, neither director Melvin Parnell nor insolvency practitioner FA Simms and Partners, which is listed as the point of contact for the meeting, have responded to requests for information and the current trading status of the company remains unknown.
When PrintWeek contacted The Oceans Group, it was informed that Jomel was no longer trading, but that an entity known as The Oceans Group continued to operate. However, the name of the new limited company was not known.
At Companies House, a company called Oceans Design & Print was formed on 27 July 2010. One of its directors, Joanne Parnell, is also a director at Oceans Digital, which also holds Jomel director Melvin Parnell as a director.
Jomel appears to have been in financial difficulties in early 2010. Two letters addressed to employees at The Oceans Group from Melvin Parnell regarding the difficulties were forwarded to PrintWeek.
Parnell stated in the letter: "As most of you are aware, cash has become very tight. We have now reached the point where we have to make some fundamental decisions over the future of the company. Based on our current sales, we need to reduce our monthly overheads by £20,000 per month."
The letter asks employees to come up with ideas to save the company money.
A second letter thanks the employees for their suggestions and states that, among other suggestions, a 20% wage reduction would be implemented across the entire company, some payments would be deferred under contract and payments to previous owners would be reduced.
