Iconic Aussie company goes under
The company behind one of Australia’s most iconic inventions has gone into administration following a loss in court.
Hills Ltd, which originally manufactured the Hills hoist clothesline before selling the brand in 2017, went into administration on Friday afternoon after a court ruled in favour of one of their suppliers in May.
The case between Hills Ltd and Stellar Vision Operators was thrown out in 2022, but Stellar won an appeal, with a $5.48m payout ordered to be paid on May 18.
The contractual dispute stemmed from patient entertainment systems ordered by Western Sydney Local Health District and involved Hills Health Solutions – the company branch dealing with healthcare technology.
Negotiations between the two parties did not pan out, leading to Stellar’s successful appeal.
Hills Ltd suspended its shares last Monday, with a statement from the company saying it was “seeking a voluntary suspension pending resolution and an announcement by the company in relation to ongoing settlement negotiations between the parties and other stakeholders”.
The shares were trading at just 2.3c each before they were suspended, with the company valued at just $12.3m.
Hills Ltd was raking in about $1bn in revenue in 2000 but in 2022 recorded a loss of $23.9m.
In 2017, it sold the manufacturing and sales rights of the Hills hoist to AMES Australasia because it could no longer make money on the iconic product.
Hills Home Living, the AMES arm that still makes and sells the Hills hoist, even has a statement in a pop-up window on their website to distance itself from Hills Ltd.
“We’re not going anywhere!” it reads. “Recent news articles claiming that Hills has gone into administration relate to Hills Limited, a completely different organisation that has not been involved with Hills clotheslines (including the hoist) for many years.
“Hills Home Living products, their availability, their warranty, and customers of our iconic brand will not be affected at all by this unrelated organisation going into administration.”
Administrators Hall Chadwick will take the reins of Hills Ltd, which also manufactures audio products and car parts, among others.
At one stage the company was also the nation’s largest manufacturer of TV antennas, although this branch of the company was sold in 2019 and is therefore not affected by Hils’ collapse.
A meeting will be held with creditors some time before June 15.
The announcement signalls a dark day for Australian manufacturing, with Hills once considered a national powerhouse.
Although there were a number of rotary clothes hoists invented in the decades before the Hills hoist, the most notable iteration came about when Lance Hill founded Hills in Adelaide in 1945.
His brother-in-law Harold Ling helped set up manufacturing in 1946 and the company blossomed from there.
The clothes drying devices made their appearance as a quintessential part of Australian culture when they were used in the closing ceremony of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, strapped to the backs of silver robots.
The rotational nature of the Hills hoist has also been co-opted by the nation’s youth for games of “Goon of Fortune”. The drinking game of chance involves another Australian invention – the wine bladder or “goon bag” – that is pegged to the end of one of the Hills hoist’s arms and spun around, with the person it stops in front of having to take a drink from the bladder.
