Trips cancelled, parents owed thousands as company goes into liquidation

Westbury Advisory's Shumit Banerjee was appointed as liquidator on Friday, June 14, and schools were told all interstate and international trips for 2024 and 2025 were cancelled.

Simon Morgan said his daughter, who attends Merici College in Canberra, was very upset at the news that the trip to Cairns as part of the CASE Ocean School program was cancelled at short notice.

About 120 students from around Australia, New Zealand and Thailand had all fully paid for the expedition from July 8 to 20.

The trip cost $7,500 per student, plus some families had paid for merchandise.

"She's very upset as are most of the girls," Mr Morgan said.

"I guess for us it means we had to scramble to reshuffle our work for the school holidays."

The company had a trip to the United States to visit NASA planned as part of its space expedition. This trip cost up to $12,000 per student and families had started paying instalments for the trip.

The company also had a film and arts school expedition scheduled.

Mr Banerjee said he had been appointed as liquidator on Friday evening and the liquidation process was in the early stages.

All Actura Australia staff had their employment terminated on Friday.

"This company was impacted by COVID and having to honour a lot of refunds to clients for cancelled trips. It's had a carryover effect until now," Mr Banerjee said.

He said the company had attempted to trade out of the situation but this year the company's revenue took an unexpected hit, possibly due to high interest rates and cost of living pressures.

Mr Banerjee said it was unknown at this stage how many creditors there were and how much total debt was owed.

The liquidators will be sending out notices to creditors this week.

The schools, students and their families had no indication that the company was in trouble. Three weeks ago the company hosted a Zoom call for the participants to meet the expedition members, Mr Morgan said.

Actura Australia chief executive officer Charles Chung said in an email the company had "no financial resources to provide customer refunds."

"Parents that have paid some or all of their expedition instalments via credit card are advised to contact their card issuer to make chargeback claim(s) which may provide for some recovery of costs," Mr Chung said.

"Parents will soon be contacted by the liquidator with more information about the liquidation process. All parent enquiries should be directed to the liquidator."