DESIGNER radiators valued at almost £333,000 are to go under the hammer after the collapse of a Winsford firm.

SBH Radiators, which claimed to be the finest UK manufacturing specialist in its field, fell into liquidation in April.

Corporate rescue and recovery specialist Begbies Traynor was brought in to handle the winding up of the business.

Now all stock at the company's Winsford Industrial Estate design studio and factory premises have been removed, with industrial auctioneers Eddisons instructed to dispose of it. 

As such, the stock has been put in an online sale, at Eddisons Auction Centre in Scunthorpe, which will end on Friday, June 21.  

SBH Radiators created a range of modern designs which retailed for as much as £1,200 for a single radiator.

Five hundred of their creations, including many top of the range models, are being sold off in the auction – completely without reserve.

Eddisons director Paul Cooper said: “The failure of a well regarded company operating mainly in the luxury end of the market inevitably comes as a surprise but these are difficult times for everyone, purse strings are tight, and that’s having an impact.

"SBH is just the latest of a number of upmarket/lifestyle businesses that we’ve dealt with around the country this year.

"The auction extends to 658 lots and includes almost 500 of the impressive contemporary stainless steel radiators that were imagined in the company’s design studios.

"They were aimed at the luxury end of the market. Even the smallest – their ‘baby’ model – retailed at more than £300 a time. The top of the range models had price tags of more than a thousand.”

“SBH was also a licensed distributor for Zack, the German company that is one of Europe’s leading designers of contemporary stainless steel accessories and the auction also includes an extensive range of their bathroom and kitchen accessories.

"Here we’re in a world where a stainless steel toilet brush holder comes with a price tag of more than £90 and a towel rail more than £100."

"For the most part, the auction has been lotted in such a way that members of the public have just as good a chance to get involved in the bidding as trade or industry buyers.

"It is an exclusively online auction so people can bid from anywhere. Everything is being sold without reserve so despite the jaw-dropping price tags that many of these lots usually bore, on Friday things will make what they make. There will likely be some bargains!”

The fully illustrated auction catalogue is available at auctions.eddisons.com. The online auction is scheduled to end at 1pm on Friday.