Pasta Nostra failure: Who wants $4.8m from gourmet boutique food business liquidation

Pasta Nostra is now being liquidated. Photo / supplied

An Auckland pasta-making business owes creditors $4.8 million and a list is out of who's claiming money, including Inland Revenue.

Bryan Williams of BWA Insolvency is liquidating St Johns-based fresh food business Pasta Nostra, which made and sold eight variants of pasta and six sauces to accompany them.

But creditors who met last month are claiming more than $1m and seven resolved to put the company under.

Pasta Nostra had been in administration when it hit financial trouble initially "but efforts by the administrator to sell the business as a going concern had not resulted in any reasonable offers", Williams said in his first report.

Liquidation was chosen because all business activities had ceased and it would allow Williams a chance to negotiate with a prospective buyer of the company assets, he said.

Rentokil Initial, the Ministry for Primary Industries, Urgent Couriers, Massimo's Italian Cheeses, Westprint, Mercury Energy, Landlords North Ltd, Archer Foods, Sheratt Ingredients, Nisbits, AB Equipment, Big Chill, Davis Trading, Goodwin Marketing & Distribution, Green Gorilla, Packit Packaging, Wedderburn Scales, Round Pizza, Stowers Containment Solutions, The Produce Specialist and Vital New Zealand are listed as creditors along with many others.

"Quick, easy and tasty meals, at a very reasonable price," is how the business had pitched itself to customers.

"Choose from our large range of flavours, combine with your favourite seasonal produce, add a sauce from our range, or just drizzle with olive oil and a knob of butter, with a sprinkle of ground pepper - makes a great meal within minutes."

But there wasn't enough of a taste for it to succeed and Williams' first report laid out a sombre financial picture.

Pasta Nostra's total estimated debts are $4.8m of which $738,000 is owed to Inland Revenue. The company has no money in the bank but instead a $2200 overdraft.

Employees are owed an estimated $70,000.

Covid was not mentioned in the report as being a reason for the failure.

Associated business Pasta Nostra Management is also in liquidation.

Pasta Nostra's biggest debt is to its own shareholders, claiming $3m from advances, Williams' provisional statement of financial position as of February 16 showed.

Half the company is owned by Kim Anders Korkman of Auckland CBD, 20 per cent by Mill Street Food Warehouse, 20 per cent by Barbara Ann Blomfield, Christopher Warren Hankins and Timothy Blomfield Kennett Blomfield. The rest is owned by Alan Frederick Brame and Elaynor Shari Wong.

Korkman is its sole director.

The Herald wrote about him in 2007 when it reviewed a restaurant.

"We are at Sage Pasta Restaurant in Mission Bay, and a word, too, about the hosts: Kim Korkman, a one-man European Union of Finnish homeland and Swedish roots, and his part-Italian part-Luxembourger wife Sylvie," wrote restaurant reviewer Ewan McDonald.

He was a finance broker until they holidayed here, fell in love with the country and married in Christchurch in 1997. He returned to Europe, where son Paolo was born. Kim then quit the business life in favour of a pasta machine, said McDonald who was eating ravioli at the time.