However, the print and mail firm's 250 unsecured trade creditors look unlikely to receive anything, according to a liquidators report from PPB Advisory.
PPB was appointed administrator on 17 May 2012 and then liquidator on 22 June, the day after a management buyout saved the company. The report by PPB partner Daniel Walley provides a financial summary of the first 12 months of the liquidation.
The report shows that SEMA owed about $13.7 million to 705 creditors when it collapsed. The 453 employee creditors were paid all of the $4 million owed to them by 28 September 2012. The two secured creditors, Australia Post and National Australia Bank, have so far received $1.4 million of their $5.6 million debt. The 250 unsecured creditors have not received any of their $4 million.
[Profile: SEMA's saviour speaks out]
Walley forecast that secured creditors would collect between $411,000 and $444,000 more by the time the liquidation was completed, which is expected to be December. None would go to unsecured creditors.
The total return to creditors looks set to reach $5.9 million or 43 cents in the dollar. Walley told ProPrint that the average return in corporate insolvencies was only about 5c in the dollar.
"It's gone really well. The business was largely held together, it sold really well and the customers really supported it, and it's still going well now. We saved a couple of hundred jobs and paid out all the employees who were made redundant on the way through," he said.
"So this is a really strong outcome for creditors as a group, albeit the unsecured have borne a lot of the pain in this."
SEMA managing director John Stewart, who led the management buyout, said the company now had 225 staff, operational sites in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, and was well placed for the future.
"We've had a profitable and successful year and we're clawing our way back. We're keeping our head down and our bum up and making sure this works," he told ProPrint.
PPB has so far charged $2.1 million for the liquidation and expects to book another $30,000 to $55,547 by the time the process is complete, according to the report.
[Related: Ups and downs of SEMA]
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