Raptis reported $91 million in revenue. Administrators found $35 in its bank accounts.

On 6 March 2026, administrators took control of the Raptis seafood group and checked its five bank accounts.

They found a combined positive balance of $35.

The money sat in a US-dollar account. The bank applied it against the group's overdraft, leaving no cash available.

This was not a small fishing business. Raptis operated 19 commercial vessels, employed more than 200 people and had reported approximately $91 million in annual revenue.

The administrators now expect 230 trade creditors, owed about $5.9 million, to receive nothing.

But there was another problem for anyone trying to understand the risk.

Even finding the whole group was difficult.

Seven companies entered the insolvency proceedings. Five carried the Raptis name. Two did not: Harvest Seafood Australia Pty Ltd, ACN 099 859 122, and Todreel Pty Ltd, ACN 008 098 468.

A supplier searching for "Raptis" could find five companies and miss two.

Todreel held fishing licences used by the group. Harvest Seafood Australia was dormant and held no material assets, according to the administrators. Yet its name had another connection to the parent: the registered HARVEST SEAFOOD mark, trade mark 2311200, is owned by A. Raptis & Sons.

The company a name search missed was named after a brand the parent owned.

The $35 belonged to a large corporate group. Most ordinary searches showed only pieces of it.

The Raptis story began with Arthur Raptis senior, a Greek migrant who found work in fishing during the 1930s. After the family moved to Adelaide, his wife Anna opened a fish-and-chip shop in the 1950s, and the family moved from cooking fish to preparing it for other shops, then into wholesale distribution, processing and commercial fishing.

More than 60 years later, Raptis described itself as one of Australia's largest privately owned fishing companies, operating from Karumba and Darwin to Brisbane, Adelaide and the Sydney Fish Market, under brands including Ocean Pearl, Seaport and Agrios. In the Northern Prawn Fishery it said it ran 14 trawlers and a mothership, and its corporate history presented the company as a pioneer of Australia's wild-caught seafood industry.

Government records support the scale of that role. Between 2007 and 2019, A. Raptis & Sons received 15 Commonwealth contracts worth approximately $4.03 million, most of them to supply vessels for fisheries research and monitoring. That work continued after the historical contract series ended.

In February 2025, the Raptis vessels Eylandt Pearl and Dolphin Pearl carried CSIRO scientists across the Gulf of Carpentaria, completing 310 research trawls over 17 days. AFMA's survey report records both vessels by name.

One year later, the company was in administration.

To understand how it got there, go back to 600 tonnes of banana prawns.

In May 2022, Raptis declined to sell 600 tonnes of banana prawns to a major customer because the parties could not agree on price.

The company sent the prawns to Vietnam for additional processing. By the time they returned to market, prawn prices had fallen, and the seafood cost more to produce and process than Raptis could recover by selling it.

The administrators say the decision contributed to inventory losses across the next two financial years.

Then the market moved further against the company. Global prawn supply increased during 2023, pushing down prices in Australia and overseas.

During the same period, Raptis's main cold-storage provider entered voluntary administration and stopped operating. Raptis had to move its seafood urgently into more expensive facilities.

The company recorded a $1.5 million inventory write-down connected to that disruption. A further $2.4 million write-down followed as low catches made each kilogram of seafood more expensive to produce.

Then the prawns became harder to catch.

AFMA records show the total Northern Prawn Fishery banana-prawn catch falling from 6,896 tonnes in 2023 to 3,875 tonnes in 2024. An official advisory council described the 2024 brown tiger-prawn survey result as the second lowest in the series.

Raptis budgeted to catch 1,400 tonnes of banana prawns in 2025.

It caught 640.

It budgeted for 750 tonnes of tiger prawns.

It caught 497.

The boats still needed fuel, maintenance, licences and crews. With too little seafood to cover those costs, management recorded another $6.1 million inventory write-down.

The failed bet had become a three-year squeeze.

Revenue concealed the damage.

The group recorded approximately $87 million in revenue in FY23, $90.6 million in FY24 and $91.3 million in FY25.

Sales appeared stable. The business beneath them was going backwards.

For A. Raptis & Sons and its subsidiaries, the direct cost of catching, processing and selling seafood rose from $82.9 million to $99.3 million in three years. A $4.5 million gross profit became an $8.3 million gross loss, and the underlying operating loss grew from $4.4 million to $16.5 million.

The wider group did not record an operating profit at any point from FY23 through the first eight months of FY26.

The revenue showed seafood moving through the company. It did not show that the company was losing money while moving it.

By April 2025, Raptis did not have enough available money to pay its overdue trade bills.

By the end of February 2026, the gap between its short-term obligations and the assets available to meet them had reached approximately $17 million.

Related parties had advanced $19 million to keep the business operating. Related landlords had allowed rent to go unpaid. The owners had been searching for a buyer since September 2024, but a proposed deal was not accepted by all stakeholders.

In early March 2026, the related parties said they would provide no more money.

There was no completed sale and no cash to continue.

The administrators' preliminary view is that the companies were likely insolvent by February 2026. They found warning signs that may stretch back to August 2025, although the liquidators must investigate further and consider any legal defences available to the directors.

Raptis still had vessels, licences, property, equipment, inventory and brands. But owning an asset does not mean its sale proceeds are free to pay every creditor.

The administrators found 200 registrations against the group on the Personal Property Securities Register: 200 records of parties claiming rights over company assets.

They included the bank, equipment and vehicle financiers, fuel and packaging suppliers, hire companies and other trade creditors.

National Australia Bank ranked first. A related-party lender owed approximately $16.4 million ranked second.

The administrators estimate total creditor claims at approximately $68.2 million. They say recoveries would need to exceed roughly $52 million before ordinary unsecured creditors could receive anything.

They do not expect that threshold to be reached.

Even the first-ranking lender is not expected to recover its debt in full. The second-ranking lender is presently expected to receive nothing.

The administrators expect no return for the 230 trade creditors owed approximately $5.9 million.

Employees rank ahead of ordinary suppliers. The administrators expect approximately $5 million of priority employee entitlements to be paid in full, although some foreign workers may not qualify for the federal government safety net.

The workforce numbers show how quickly the business contracted.

Raptis's 2024-25 gender-equality return recorded 290 workers, including 207 casual non-managers.

By 15 September 2026, only 14 permanent and casual workers remained to help close the business.

The administrators approached more than 100 possible buyers.

Six non-binding offers arrived. None produced an acceptable sale of the operating business, so the fleet was broken up.

Gordon Brothers advertised 16 vessels and a specialised mothership across Karumba, Brisbane and Adelaide.

Boats that had worked as one system became separate catalogue entries: Northern Pearl, Adelaide Pearl, Arnhem Pearl, Australian Pearl, Karumba Pearl and Raptis Pearl.

Fishing permits could be purchased with the vessels or separately.

Even items aboard the boats carried other claims: life rafts, satellite equipment, refrigerated containers and scientific monitoring equipment were all identified as possibly belonging to third parties.

The sale catalogue shows a vertically integrated company being dismantled one asset at a time.

By September, four vessels had been sold. The administrators had also sold associated fishing licences and smaller pieces of equipment.

The Karumba property portfolio was divided into 12 lots, including residential property, industrial sites, two wet leases and the fuel depot that had supported the town's fishing operations. It attracted 16 offers.

The brands were for sale too.

IP Australia records 16 registered trade marks owned by A. Raptis & Sons. The oldest are RAPTIS, filed 29 May 1968, and OCEAN PEARL, filed 16 July 1970, and the company was still registering marks in 2024. The names may outlast the group.

A customer can own valuable assets, employ hundreds of people and report $91 million in revenue while losing money on the work producing those sales. That is the financial warning.

The structural one is harder to see. The name on an invoice may reveal only part of the customer.

The group's 15 Commonwealth contracts appear under three versions of the supplier's name, joined reliably only by the ABN. IP Australia carries the trade marks under four versions of the owner's name, and a broad search for "Raptis" returns 45 marks held by at least six other owners, among them three individuals and an American tyre company.

The early signs also differed by who you were. A landlord saw unpaid rent. An equipment financier saw a register crowded with competing claims. A cold-storage operator saw a customer whose margins had already been damaged when its previous provider failed. An adviser saw the growing distance between asset values on paper and the cash those assets could produce in time.

For a supplier, the lesson is immediate. Before extending credit, search the ABN and ACN, not just the name. Check former names, related companies, brands and registered claims over assets. Establish which company owns the equipment, which employs the workers and which is named on the invoice.

At the end, the vessels, licences, properties and brands were all still visible. The whole group was not visible in any one simple search.

In its five bank accounts, the administrators found $35.

Then the bank took it.

The day in one bar. 131 notices published and 146 entities on the register. Fewer than half of them were newly published distress entries. A winding-up application asks a court for an order. It does not mean a company has been wound up. The entities split by classification into 68 new distress entries, 29 process transitions, 3 solvent members' voluntary liquidations, 11 winding-up applications, 35 procedural filings. ASIC published notices concerning 146 entities on the day, across 131 notices. 68 are newly published distress entries: a company entering an insolvent process, disclosed in this issue. The remaining 78 are:

11 winding-up applications, which ask a court for an order and are not findings of insolvency 35 procedural filings on cases already open: meetings, dividends, proof deadlines and disclaimers 29 companies already inside a process that moved stage, such as an administration converting to liquidation 3 members' voluntary liquidations, which are solvent and not failures at all 0 vacancies filled, where the process continues with a new practitioner Treating every entity on the day's register as a new distress event would report 146 where the resolved register supports 68 newly published distress entries.

The register carried 68 newly published distress entries. Those carrying a former or trading name are listed first. Dates are from the notice.

65 further companies appear on the register for this day: see the full 23 September 2026 register.

48 of the day's entities carry a trading, business or former name that differs from the legal name by more than case, punctuation or a corporate suffix. The entities below are the ones an exposure list of any shape would surface first: distress entries, then applications and stage changes. Solvent and procedural rows are counted but not shown.

45 further entities carry at least one other name on record. The complete resolved name set for the day ships as the Ledger File.

Important: These are winding-up applications, not findings that the companies are insolvent or have been wound up. Hearing details are those listed in the notices and may change or may already have passed. Check the current court list and company status before acting.

8 further applications appear on the register for this day: see the full 23 September 2026 register.

These dates come from the notices and are recorded for reference. Confirm the current position before acting.

60 further dated obligations appear on the register for this day: see the full 23 September 2026 register.

71 of the day's companies were already in the Register. Those whose event changed are shown below. The earlier date on each row is a PUBLICATION date, so the underlying event is earlier still. None of those earlier steps is visible to anyone reading a single day in isolation.

58 further companies appear on the register for this day: see the full 23 September 2026 register.

1. VAST RENEWABLES LIMITED (ACN 136 258 574) 2. VAST ENERGY TECHNOLOGIES PTY LTD (ACN 685 198 770) 3. VAST EMPLOYEE SHARE HOLDINGS PTY LTD (ACN 673 720 851)

The seven Raptis companies are in liquidation. If a company you deal with has entered administration or liquidation, our creditor guide explains the public-record steps and how to identify the correct legal entity, which is the question this issue is about. Each route is keyed to how the money is at stake, every statement links to its official source, and the entity lookup is free.

We publish public-record information, not advice. Where a company is in an external administration, the appointed practitioner is the authoritative source on that matter.

Run the Raptis test on your own ledger. Take your ten largest trade customers and check whether the name on the invoice is the entity that owns the assets, employs the staff and signs the contract. Then check whether that entity has siblings.

Seven companies failed together here. Two of them could not be found by searching the name everyone knew.

The notices behind this issue are on ASIC's published notices register.

This issue resolved a seven-company group to one notice, found two members a name search misses, and tied one of them to a trade mark the parent owns. That is the work the register does every publication day: legal names, former names, ACNs, process changes and court dates, connected across days instead of read one notice at a time. Get the next Daily Register and the resolution arrives before you need it.

Primary sources: the administrators' 13 July report to creditors and 15 September supplementary report, ASIC published notices, AFMA publications, the Gordon Brothers asset-sale catalogue, Commonwealth contract records, gender-equality reporting and IP Australia records.