Photo: RNZ / Louise Ternouth
A small business which worked on school lunch provider Libelle Group's production line equipment said it was "blindsided" by the provider going into liquidation.
A report by liquidators' Robert Campbell and David Webb of Deloitte on Tuesday found Libelle Group owed more than $14 million to 248 creditors.
One of them is the Hamilton company Echo Automation, whose owner Sean Donovan told Checkpoint Libelle Group owed them about $15,000.
"Everything's pretty tough right now, but it's just another spanner in the works, isn't it?" he said.
"If you work that on about a 15 percent return, that's about $100,000 we've got to make before we start making any profit again."
Donovan said it was a lot of money for a small business to lose.
"We'll struggle, but yeah, we'll figure something out.
"It is a big hit. I'm not going to lie about that. It's going to hurt."
Donovan said the first he heard about the liquidation was through the news.
He said communication with Libelle was really good at the start, but had slowly changed.
"The email stopped getting answered, and then the account's phone number was disconnected, and then we were starting to think, 'Well, what's going on here?' So then we started emailing a few more people, and then we saw the news."
Donovan said Echo Automation had made machines that put the meals in the trays, sealed them up, and boxed them away.
"They would often break down, and different parts of them broke down over time, and instead of fixing them or adjusting them - coming up with a different approach - they would quite often just remove that machine and somebody would turn up with a spoon instead."
Donovan said he had seen staff spooning meals manually into containers.
"They had equipment designed to do it, but there was issues with getting it working properly, and I think going manual was the easiest solution for them."
In a statement, Libelle Group's liquidators' said they could not comment on what had happened prior to their involvement until their review of the business was complete.
They said they were working with suppliers and creditors to identify how many there were and what they were owed.
RNZ has also contacted Libelle Group directly for comment.
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