RedEarth was scouting sites for a battery factory in May. Four months later it was in administration.

On 8 May, RedEarth was talking to the NSW Government about where it might build batteries in Western Sydney. Three possible sites had been identified.

On 25 September, Red Earth Energy Storage Pty Ltd, ACN 163 828 920, entered voluntary administration.

Those two facts are less than five months apart. Both were real.

The NSW Department of Planning's lobbying register records Red Earth Energy discussing a proposed battery-manufacturing project with the department. The three sites already had State significant development consents covering subdivision and warehouse or industrial buildings. Officials described the planning pathway, identified hazards and risk as key assessment matters, and offered further engagement.

Nothing in that record says a factory was certain to be built. It does show a company still exploring expansion in May.

If that was the only record you saw, you could miss another version of RedEarth that was also sitting in public documents.

By June 2025 it had A$54.6 million of accumulated losses and just A$520,000 in cash. Through 2025 its secured financing was amended four times. In September and October another company lent it A$2.5 million at 20% interest, and that company would soon take it over.

The administration notice tells you what happened on 25 September. What came before that date is the rest of the story.

The company under administration is Red Earth Energy Storage Pty Ltd, ACN 163 828 920. ASIC records Red Earth Energy Storage Limited as a former name.

The administrator is Travis Jay Pullen of B&T Advisory. The first creditors' meeting is on 8 October, and proofs and proxies are due by 5pm on 7 October.

There is another company with an almost identical name: RedEarth Group Australia Limited, ACN 010 978 800. That is the battery company's parent. It is not the company named in the 25 September appointment, and no insolvency notice was published against it between January 2025 and 30 September 2026.

The parent has its own history. Until December 2025 it was Health and Plant Protein Group Limited, or HPP. Before that it was Buderim Group Limited and, earlier, Buderim Ginger Limited. The Australian Business Register dates the RedEarth Group Australia name from 13 December 2025.

It has not been listed on the ASX since 28 August 2025. That day ASX removed HPP from its official list for not paying its annual listing fee, and the same day HPP announced the RedEarth deal, saying it would be delisted before the merger and would seek to list again.

The battery business entered administration. Its parent did not. That is the first distinction a headline saying simply "RedEarth collapses" can lose.

The May planning meeting matters because it was not a RedEarth marketing announcement. It sits in the NSW Government's own lobbying register, which records a registered lobbyist for Red Earth Energy meeting the department on Microsoft Teams. That is all the record proves.

But put yourself in the position of somebody assessing the company at the time. There was a business with thousands of systems already installed. It was developing products. Its software remained active. It had recently been taken over. And it was talking to government planners about possible sites for more manufacturing.

Those are all signs of commercial activity. They are not the same thing as signs of financial health. For that, you had to look somewhere else.

RedEarth had been privately owned, which ordinarily makes detailed financial information hard to obtain. The 2025 takeover changed that: HPP's offer documents put RedEarth's financial position into the public record.

For the year to June 2025, RedEarth reported:

The FY2025 figures were unaudited. The comparative FY2024 figures were audited.

Revenue had fallen from A$13.67 million the year before. The FY2025 loss was well below the A$11.06 million reported for FY2024, but the business remained loss-making, and the takeover documents described it as having low cash reserves.

In May, the expansion story was public. So was the financial pressure. You had to know where to look for both.

RedEarth's funding arrangements had already been changing. A secured facility with Dragonfly Envirocapital Pty Ltd was dated 24 June 2024. It was amended in March 2025, again in July, and twice in August.

Then HPP itself started funding RedEarth. It advanced A$1.25 million on 1 September 2025 and another A$1.25 million on or about 20 October: A$2.5 million in total, at 20% a year.

The offer documents also identified about A$4.5 million of senior debt and interest to be repaid by 31 March 2026. If the offer was unsuccessful, HPP's document said, RedEarth would have to repay HPP's A$2.5 million plus interest by 26 November 2025, and the senior debt and interest by 31 March 2026.

That was written before the administration. The financing pressure was not first revealed on 25 September 2026.

HPP was not originally an energy-storage company. By 2025 it was looking for a new direction, and RedEarth became it.

The deal was announced on 28 August 2025 as a share-swap takeover. By 8 December, HPP had passed 90% of RedEarth's shares and moved to compulsorily acquire the rest.

In December, while that process was under way, HPP took the RedEarth name itself and became RedEarth Group Australia Limited.

So the corporate structure around the administration is less than a year old. The company that entered administration is the battery company HPP took over. The company carrying the RedEarth Group name is the one that took it over.

Same brand. Different ACNs. Different legal position.

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RedEarth's 2019 Series A had raised A$4.75 million, with Queensland's Business Development Fund among the investors. In 2021 it announced an A$12 million pre-IPO raise. Investors it named included Ord Minnett Private Capital, Perennial Value and Thorney. The stated plan was an ASX listing in 2022. That listing did not happen.

The HPP deal created another route: the merged company aimed to apply for ASX listing before the end of the first quarter of 2026. That did not happen either.

About nine months after the takeover, the battery company HPP had acquired entered administration.

By July 2025, RedEarth said it had installed more than 2,650 systems since July 2021, representing about 54 MWh of battery capacity.

That matters. This was not a technology proposal that ran out of money before reaching customers. There are real RedEarth systems in homes and businesses, and RedEarth's own customer announcements carry ABN 34 163 828 920, which contains the ACN of the company now in administration.

It was also selling into a growing market. When HPP announced the deal, it pointed to demand from the federal Cheaper Home Batteries Program, which began on 1 July 2025.

Administration does not by itself tell customers that their batteries will stop working, that software access will disappear or that warranties will not be honoured. It does give customers, installers and resellers a reason to follow what happens to the operating business.

On 30 March 2026, RedEarth made all of its paid Private Power Plant software modules free for compatible systems, offered active subscribers a full refund and left 4G monitoring as the only paid feature.

There is no evidence that this caused the administration. It does show a company still changing its business six months before administration, and six weeks before it met NSW Planning about new manufacturing sites.

Red Earth Energy Storage has converted from a public company to a proprietary one. ASIC's register and the administration notice both use the Pty Ltd name and record Limited as a former name. The Australian Business Register has not caught up: updated as recently as 30 September 2026, it still shows Red Earth Energy Storage Limited, an Australian public company.

The name is therefore not the safest way to follow the company. The ACN is: 163 828 920. That number stays with the entity while names and company types change.

Red Earth Energy Storage Pty Ltd entered voluntary administration on 25 September 2026, and Travis Jay Pullen of B&T Advisory was appointed administrator. That tells you the company's status. It does not tell you its chronology.

The chronology is longer: years of private and public fundraising, A$54.6 million of accumulated losses by June 2025, a secured facility amended four times in 2025, a new lender at 20%, a takeover, a parent taking the RedEarth name, a software overhaul and three possible factory sites. Then administration.

None of those earlier facts proves that failure was inevitable. The useful point is simpler: a company can still be selling, launching products and considering expansion while its financing tells a very different story.

Both sides of RedEarth were public. They just sat in different records.

None of those answers is in the appointment notice.

For creditors, one date does not wait: the first meeting is on 8 October, with proofs and proxies due by 5pm on 7 October. And for anyone trying to work out whether their own contract, invoice, warranty or exposure sits with the company in administration, the starting point is not the RedEarth logo. It is the ACN: 163 828 920.

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We publish public-record information, not advice. The administrator is the authoritative source on the administration, and nothing here is a statement about the solvency of RedEarth Group Australia Limited or about any party's claim.