Vanmaker LDV crashed with debts of £234 million and left all of its unsecured creditors high and dry.

Although production of the company's new Maxus van has resumed at the Washwood Heath factory in Birmingham, hundreds of creditors will not get a penny back.

They include suppliers of components to the companies old Pilot and Convoy models which were scrapped by the company's new owners, American private equity group Sun Capital Partners.

All but £300,000 of the £19,563,363 received by the administrators was used to pay off Barclays Bank and Lloyds UDT.

The old company, LDV Limited, was put into administration on December 16 but was bought by Sun two hours later and renamed LDV Group.

The manoeuvre was a comparatively new device called a pre-packaged administration, or "pre-pack" by insolvency practitioners.

It's a controversial means of enabling a struggling company to be transferred to a new owner at high speed while leaving its liabilities behind.

The full extent of LDV's problems emerge from the report of administrators from PricewaterhouseCoopers, a copy of which The Birmingham Post has obtained.

In a covering letter to creditors dated February 7, joint administrator Mark Hopkins says that the company lost a total of more than £58 million in the 33 months from January 1, 2003 to September 30, 2005.

Much of the deficit related to the cost of designing and developing Maxus, the first all-new vehicle that LDV had to its credit since it was rescued by an MBO following the crash of the old Leyland DAF group in 1993.

"During late 2005, LDV's losses manifested themselves in a cash shortage and creditor pressure," the letter said.

With the threat of winding up petitions from creditors growing, it became apparent the company was insolvent a nd unable to meet its liabilities.

Existing shareholders included the venture capital group 3i which had supported an earlier refinancing of the company, without additional partners coming on board.

Sun, which had been approached in November, said it was willing only to form a company to buy the LDV assets out of insolvency.

"The scale of the liabilities and difficulties likely to be encountered in recommencing production made the possibility of continuing to trade with a view to restructuring LDV or being able to seek out other potential buyers unlikely," Mr Hopkins went on to say.

It is believed that some £24 million of taxpayers' money put into LDV by the Department of Trade and Industry to support develop-ment of the Maxus has been written off.

In addition, the Pensions Protection Fund is being asked to take responsibility for the company's final salary pension scheme, which had an estimated deficit of £22 million.

The crash has resulted in more than 200 manufacturing and executive staff, including chief executive Allan Amey, losing their jobs.

The new company has paid off suppliers of components for the Maxus, which is now being produced at the rate of about 200 week.

"They are paying on time, and paying well," one said.