ADMINISTRATORS have been called in to a debt-stricken Hampshire hauliers, where 80 staff lost their jobs on Monday.

Rimes and Co, the same firm that liquidated Boyes Conning in August, have now been called in to perform the last rites on its parent GJ Cooper, which operates on the same site in West End.

Meanwhile, many of the staff who turned up for work on Monday to find they no longer had a job have found work with rival firms and landlords are in negotiations with other hauliers about taking over the site.

Channel Island-based landlord FIP West End ordered bailiffs to take possession of the Burnett Lane site over estimated debts of £250,000 late last week.

A spokesman for FIP said no rent, gas or electricity bills had been paid since GJ Cooper was sold for a pound in July by then owner Graham Westcott to Manchester businessman Faridoon Yaghoobzadeh.

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In little over a month after Mr Yaghoobzadeh took control, Barclays claimed debt-stricken Boyes ran up a hefty £74,000 “unauthorised overdraft”.

Meanwhile, landlords said Mr Yaghoobzadeh has yet to contact them and his whereabouts is unknown.

Shortly after he took control of the business, subsidiary Boyes Conning hit the headlines when it went bust in August owing £1.7m to 139 companies, many of them small firms from Hampshire.

Irish firm Tinnelly Transport stepped in and bought the goodwill of the business promising a “long and fruitful future”, which came to an abrupt end when bailiffs stepped in and barred them from the site.

Landlords said they had no relationship or contract with Tinnellys and therefore they were operating from the site without permission.

Jock Russell of FIP said: “We have not met the administrator yet and we are waiting to find out what happens next.

“Quite a lot of those people who were out of work on Monday have now found jobs elsewhere. I have been told today that they have found jobs elsewhere. They were a good team.

“We are prepared to speak to anybody about the buildings that are empty. We are talking to some of the existing operators on the site about giving them more space.”

Simon Webb, former managing director of Boyes Conning, who stayed on with the new company but was finally laid off last week, said: “It’s true that lots of people have found work but there are still loads of people who haven’t.

“I have had grown men who worked for me for ten years in tears over what has gone on here.”