Zentia has entered administration and stopped trading, with around 170 jobs lost at its two Gateshead plants after production at the sites ceased. The company’s majority of staff were made redundant when joint administrators from Interpath were appointed to Zentia Limited and Zentia Profiles Limited.

The move lands hard for workers in a business that made suspended ceilings and supplied mineral fibre tiles and grids to offices, schools and hospitals. The collapse is being searched now because the shutdown was immediate: production has stopped, the workforce has been cut back to a small number retained to help the administrators, and the future of the business now depends on whether anyone will buy what is left.

Will Wright and James Lumb were brought in after directors concluded there was no solvent outcome available, despite having earlier explored a sale. The administrators will now seek buyers for the companies’ business and assets, including residual stock, in a process that will determine whether any part of Zentia survives beyond the administration.

That possibility sits uneasily beside what happened before the crash. The directors secured a £6.5m cash injection from the shareholder last year, yet the financial pressure still proved too much as high energy prices lifted production costs and sales came in below forecast. Zentia, formerly Armstrong Ceiling Solutions after being renamed following acquisition by a German asset manager, had already been under strain in a construction supply chain that administrators described as difficult.

For Lumb, the scale of the loss cuts deeper than a balance-sheet event. He said Zentia has a rich history in the North East stretching back more than 100 years and called the collapse a tremendous shame, while adding that thoughts were with the dedicated staff hit by redundancy. He also urged interested parties to contact the administrators quickly if they want to examine the business and its remaining stock.

The company had won the Made in Britain Award at the North East Business Awards in 2023, and five years ago it was talking about creating jobs by bringing manufacturing in-house with a £12m finance facility. Now the immediate question is whether that history becomes part of a rescue sale or a closing chapter written out through administration.