A Northland culinary school which closed down suddenly last month, putting tutors out of work and students in limbo, was owned by a company caught up in a Serious Fraud Office probe.
But the good news for students at the Culinary Institute of New Zealand, on Kerikeri's Waipapa Rd, is that a Queenstown firm has bought the buildings and equipment and plans to re-open the school in February. It had 31 students at levels 3 and 4.
The Culinary Institute was part of the Quantum Education Group, which has been owned since 2014 by New Zealand's largest private training college, Intueri Education Group.
Earlier this year Intueri revealed that Quantum was the subject of a Serious Fraud Office (SFO) enquiry. Quantum had already been investigated by the Tertiary Education Commission regarding a mismatch between claimed success rates and actual student numbers, and ordered to repay some of its government funding.
At the end of November, Intueri offloaded almost all its Quantum courses. Many were taken on by another provider, Academy New Zealand, while others, such as the Culinary Institute, had been due to close down.