Metal Closures liquidator puts Himachal factory up for sale at ₹12.1 crore, seven years after liquidation was ordered

The liquidator of Bengaluru-based Metal Closures Pvt Ltd has put the company’s factory at Mogi Nand in Himachal Pradesh up for e-auction. The reserve price is ₹12.10 crore if the land, building and machinery are sold together. Bidders can also buy the plant and machinery on its own for ₹10.50 crore.

The auction, run by liquidator Ramanathan Bhuvaneshwari, is scheduled for October 19 on the IBBI-Baanknet platform, according to a sale notice dated September 29.

The liquidator is offering the asset in three ways. Option A is a slump sale of the whole factory on 5.15 bighas of land on the Ambala-Dehradun-Haridwar Road, including land, building and all plant and machinery. It carries an earnest money deposit (EMD) of ₹1.21 crore and bid increments of ₹12 lakh. Financial assets, namely debtors, inventory and loans and advances, are not part of the sale.

Option B covers only the plant and machinery, at ₹10.50 crore with a ₹1.05 crore EMD. Option C breaks the machinery into 15 lots that can be bid for separately, with reserve prices ranging from ₹3.75 lakh for a set of six tool machines to ₹3.59 crore for a composite closures and side wall caps line. The other large lots are a second side wall caps line at ₹1.91 crore and an Alfonshaar sheet-feed CNC machine for PP caps at ₹1.08 crore.

The 15 Option C lots add up to ₹10.50 crore, the same as the Option B price. That puts the value of the land and building at about ₹1.6 crore, the difference between Options A and B. Under the notice, the consultation committee will decide whether to award the sale to the Option A bidder, the Option B bidder, or one or more Option C bidders. Inspections are open by appointment until October 14, and EMDs must be paid on October 15–16. Bidders must declare they are not barred under Section 29A of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code.

The auction comes after years of litigation. The State Bank of India, on behalf of a consortium of banks, filed an application under Section 7 of the Code, and the NCLT’s Bengaluru bench admitted the company into insolvency on December 14, 2018 and ordered its liquidation on September 26, 2019. The company’s loans had been classified as non-performing by SBI on October 31, 2010, by Punjab National Bank on June 30, 2014, and by Corporation Bank on December 31, 2014.

The suspended management challenged the proceedings at the NCLAT and the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court upheld the liquidation order on February 12, 2026, in Civil Appeal No. 477/2022. More recently, the NCLT Bengaluru bench rejected an application by suspended director Bharath Kumar to remove the liquidator. The bench found that the auction proposal and the liquidator’s continuation had the required majority support of the stakeholders’ consultation committee, and called the allegations baseless and aimed at delaying the liquidation. The committee had itself questioned liquidation costs of ₹1.09 crore.

Incorporated in 1977, Metal Closures makes metal packaging products, including crowns, roll-on pilfer-proof caps, twist-off lug caps, screw caps, shoe polish tins and metal jackets for dry-cell batteries. Those product lines match the machinery lots now up for sale.

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