Online grocery startup Supie, which raised millions from investors to take on the big supermarket chains, has gone into voluntary administration.

The business has approximately 120 staff.

Voluntary administrator Richard Nacey said: “The sole director
of the three companies [in the Supie Group] made the decision to appoint administrators following a key investor ceasing to continue providing funding to the business.

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“This resulted in the business facing cash flow difficulties. While sales have rapidly grown over the last calendar year, recent growth has been lower than expected, and insufficient to provide the scale needed to operate profitably in what is a highly competitive industry.”

Its site was offline this morning, displaying an “undergoing maintenance” message.

PwC said in a statement: “As Voluntary Administrators, we don’t have sufficient funding to continue to trade the business in administration. In the absence of securing funding, we expect to be seeking to have the three companies in the group placed into liquidation in the near future.”

In April, Supie said it was standing firm after facing pushback from multiple suppliers about its retail prices.

The business, which operates out of Auckland, said suppliers demanded Supie increase retail pricing, despite their “reasonable profit margins”.

Founder Sarah Balle said the approaches from suppliers came after the company implemented a more competitive pricing strategy in January.

“We’re not entirely sure why suppliers are putting pressure on us. We know there is a duopoly market in New Zealand,” Balle said.

$10m revenue, seeking new funding

A May 4 investor update, seen by the Herald, said “We’ve grown orders over 150 per cent in less than three months. We are now just a few dollars shy of $10m in annualised revenue.”

The update said Supie was trying to raise more money.

“Over the past few weeks we have been actively engaging with potential funders and other strategic parties in order to give Supie a pathway to continued growth. We’re still pursuing these conversations but as yet have nothing to share with you,” it said.

The backers

Directors Ben Kepes and Hadleigh Ford were removed on Friday, according to Companies Office filings, leaving founder Sarah Balle as the sole board member.

Balle appeared to have deleted her LinkedIn profile. She was phoned for comment but there was no answer this morning.

An investor told the Herald he had not been able to reach the Supie team since midway through last week.

Supie was launched in mid-2021, backed by a $2.5 million seed round led by Auckland-based private equity player Icehouse Ventures and raised $4.9 million through a crowd-funded equity drive on the Snowball Effect platform in July last year.

Snowball Nominees is listed as a 14 per cent shareholder.

The largest single investor is Icehouse Ventures, with a 26 per cent stake, followed by Balle with a 17 per cent holding. Various entrepreneurs, including Kepes and Ford, have small stakes.

Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.