A former consultant hired by the collapsed Mallusk mining firm Tribe Technology has paid just £160,000 in cash to buy the Invest NI-backed company out of administration.
Mike Wilkes’ Wilxpro completed the acquisition of the mining and exploration equipment manufacturer on January 14 in a deal that involved the Brisbane-based operation assuming £2 million of debt Tribe Tech owed to its main lender, the Dublin office of global investment manager Beach Point Capital (BPC).
Details of the deal have been published in a new report by the administrators at KPMG.
Originally founded in late 2019 in Western Australia by Crossgar-born Charlie King, Tribe Tech expanded to a manufacturing operation in Mallusk in September 2021, promising to develop the world’s first completely unmanned reverse circulation (RC) drill rig.
The move was backed by a support package worth around £1.9m from Invest NI to support the creation of up to 120 jobs.
Tribe Tech completed an IPO (initial public offering) in September 2023, raising £4.6m, valuing the business at around £22m.
However, the company’s value fell amid delays in the rollout of its first autonomous drill rig.
Trading was suspended in January 2025 when Tribe Tech failed to publish its annual report.
Shareholders approved a plan to delist from the London Stock Exchange’s AIM market the following month.
At the time of its collapse in January 2026, Tribe Tech Group Ltd had a deficit of around £9m on its books, including £6.6m owed to BPC.
It’s understood just over £1.1m of funding was paid out of Invest NI’s £1.9m support package, including £689,980 from the Access to Finance debt and equity scheme.
The administrators at KPMG said while Tribe Tech Group achieved revenue growth between 2022 and 2025, delays and cost overruns in developing and delivering the complex new rig systems resulted in substantial losses, leaving the business unsustainable.
By February 2025, Tribe Tech was costing around £900,000 per month to operate.
Despite securing a further £2.85m from BPC’s Dublin office, and slashing costs to £150,000 per month, the company continued to face significant cash flow issues.
By mid-2025, Tribe Tech brought in M&A advisors, who approached around 45 potential acquirers before KPMG were formally engaged in late November.
With the company due to run out of cash by early January, an accelerated pre-pack administration sale was completed with Wilxpro, via a newly created subsidiary Tribe Tech UK.
The sale included Tribe Tech’s Australian entity, based in Perth.
Mike Wilkes was previously hired by Tribe Tech as a consultant, while a company owned by his wife held a 0.08% equity interest in Tribe Tech’s parent holding company.
KPMG’s administrators estimate around £5.9m is owed to unsecured creditors, most of it to its loss-making parent holding company, which is also now in administration.
The latest annual accounts for Tribe Technology Holdings Ltd show Invest NI held a 3.48% interest at the end of June 2024.
It recorded a pre-tax loss of £7.3m the same year.
While preferential and secondary preferential creditors will be repaid in full, it’s unclear how much will be left for Tribe Tech’s unsecured creditors.
In a statement last month, Invest NI told the Belfast Telegraph it was “currently assessing any clawback implications”.
