Typhoo Tea comes in administration.

The 120-year-old brand has fallen into administration due to falling sales, mounting losses and mounting debts.

Advisory firm Kroll has been appointed to handle the administration and find a buyer for the tea business.

Vape and battery maker Supreme is the frontrunner to buy Typhoon, but said there is “no certainty” the deal will go ahead.

Typhoon has been trying to turn itself around for some time, but suffered a setback last year after damaging its former factory in Morton, Merseyside.

“The company is exploring the sale of businesses and assets that are in the process of completion,” Kroll said.

“The administration process provides protection to Typhoon, allowing the joint administrators to finalize the sale to save the business.”

Manchester-based Supreme, which stocks and distributes Duracell and Energiser batteries as well as Elf Bar vapes, is close to buying the firm in a bid to diversify its business.

It does not currently stock or distribute any tea brands, but it works with brands of soft drinks, gym supplements and multivitamin gummies.

Supreme said talks are at an “advanced stage” but “no final terms of a potential acquisition have been agreed”.

Kroll added that Typhoon was dealing with “significant cash flow disruptions as a result of supply chain disruptions and subsequent service issues”.

According to the firm’s latest results, which cover the year to the end of September 2023, pre-tax losses widened to £38m from £9.6m and sales fell to £25.3m from £33.7m.

Meanwhile, the company’s debts have exceeded the value of its assets.

The results also revealed “extraordinary costs” worth £24.1m, some of which related to the break-in at the Morton plant, which closed last year.

Typho said: “During August 2023, a group of organized trespassers entered the Morton site and occupied it for several days.”

It added that the trespassers caused “massive damage” and made the site “inaccessible”.

Typhoon said many of the teas were unusable and it was unable to fulfill some customer orders.

Typhoo Tea is seen as one of the UK’s leading tea brands, alongside the likes of PG Tips, Tetley and Yorkshire Tea.

The Bristol-headquartered company was founded in 1903 by Birmingham-born John Sumner. It is currently majority owned by private equity firm Zetland Capital.

His administration comes just two months after the company rebranded itself with “fair-free tea,” a campaign highlighting violence and abuse in the tea supply chain.

Typhoon said that it did not guarantee that its own product was “free of fear”, but that it “invites the tea industry to question and evaluate whether their tea is sexual violence”. is free from”.

The 2023 BBC Panorama documentary Sex for Work: The True Cast of Our Tea found that three out of four women interviewed on tea estates Sexually abused.