Optima puts hands up and calls in administrators

One of Australia’s longest running white-box builders, Optima Technology Solutions, has had the administrators called in by parent company Optima ICM Limited. Jeff Li, managing director at Pioneer Computers exclusively told CRN it would take up the warranty and servicing for Optima’s customers.

The company announced to the ASX that the directors of Optima ICM Limited have appointed David Mansfield and Rick Porter of Moore Stephens as voluntary administrators for its subsidiaries Optima Technology Solutions, Digital City Group and 3CSHOP International.

Cornel Ung, chairman and managing director at Optima, stated to the ASX that Optima had been operating under fierce competition from multinational vendors for several years. “[Optima] has had its losses for some time but suffered a major setback when it lost the preferred supplier status for the Department of Education and training in both Queensland and New South Wales,” stated Ung.

“The business of Digital City Group Pty Ltd which was acquired last year failed to meet the profit forecasts and has been consistently experiencing losses. Unfortunately with the general downturn in retail sales, management have not been able to turn this business around.”

Despite hopes from the channel that Optima Technology Solutions would override its financial problems, industry pundits believe the main problem for the company was its huge overheads. An industry source told CRN it ended up “killing the business.”

“The [financial] hole is to big – how can you recover from the $5 million loss it reported to the ASX in February – especially for a local company. Unfortunately we have lost one of the local IT icons – it’s no good for the Australian IT industry. Optima was a very good company,” said the source.

Jeff Li, managing director at Pioneer Computers told CRN that it would be looking after the warranty and servicing for Optima’s customers. “When BCN went bankrupt we took up the services for its customers. Optima has a lot of products and customers out in the market, Pioneer will help it look after the servicing,” said Li.