A company once touted as part of the solution to Auckland's housing crisis with its fast-turnaround pre-fabricated dwellings has been put into liquidation over unpaid bills amid reports of frictions within its management team.
Liquidators Peri Finnigan and Boris van Delden believe ABT Construction ceased trading in the middle of last year.
Transport firm Multi-Trans applied to put the company into liquidation.
Multi-Trans director Dave Brown said his firm hauled ABT modules from the Auckland Show Grounds to an Albany development in 2015 but wasn't paid in full.
Brown said ABT "paid a little bit of money, locked the office and didn't answer the phone."
In 2015, ABT had four developments on the go in Auckland at Narrow Neck, Unsworth Heights and Grafton and even a contract for toilets on Great Barrier Island.
Its model for building modular homes offsite at a factory, keeping costs low, was praised by Housing Minister Nick Smith at the time.
"The sort of technology being developed by ABT is part of the solution to New Zealand's housing challenges in that it involves scale and prefab construction as well as apartment-style design," Smith told the Herald in 2015.
The modules were unusual in often being multistoried. They could be craned onto building sites once foundations were in place.