• WD Moore & Co owner Geoff More and farmer Geoff Lacy.

Failed global push kills off pioneering Freo company

A FAILED global expansion has seen one of Fremantle’s pioneering companies collapse.

WD Moore & Co has been trading in the city since 1862, but administrators were called in on June 6 and it’s now being wound up and stock auctioned off.

Formed by one Fremantle’s “merchant princes”, William Dalgety Moore, the company first sold liquor from a warehouse in Henry Street (now the Moore’s gallery) before moving into windmills 30 years later.

Moore’s grandson Geoff Moore took over the running of the company in 1979 and is devastated the business deal he thought was going to help him take on the world has sent the family company bust.

Speaking from the O’Connor warehouse they moved to in 1954, Mr Moore said he’d tried to find a way out of the financial strife but the business was “now all gone”.

Two years ago WD Moore was going gangbusters and an offer came in from Singapore-based firm Pan Asian Holdings to take up a 51 per cent share.

“These guys came to Perth looking for a foothold for their products in Australia and they asked if were interesting in selling our business and we said ‘yes we would’,” Mr Moore told the Herald.

“They were going to take our products to Asia. Into expanded markets—global markets—what could be better than that.

But the deal soured an now Mr Moore’s company has been left owing Pan Asian $336,000.

“We are a 151-year-old business—the second oldest businesses in the state.

“It’s dead.”

Mr Moore wouldn’t be drawn on how the relationship with Pan Asian went sour.

The closure has meant sacking 15 staff, some who had worked there almost five decades.

“We have a man that is 68-years-old, that has been here for 48 years, who just wanted another couple of years,” he said.

“He just beat leukaemia—how do you think he feels?

“Other guys, where are they going to go? They are too old to get jobs anywhere else.”

Mr Moore said thousands of farmers would  “be bleeding” because of the company’s demise.

“There are people who have depended on this business, it wasn’t just keeping us in jobs, we kept a lot of other people in jobs,” he said.

“Farmers who are struggling at the moment don’t need another nail in the coffin.

“How can a company last 150 years and not do something right?”

Geoff Lacy, whose family ran Hillview Station at Meekatharra for 90 years, said WD Moore meant a lot to cockies in the bush.

He popped into see Mr Moore after he heard on the bush telegraph the business was closing.

“There was a bond and integrity between our families,” he said.

“We wouldn’t even ring up and get a quote because we knew it was going to be right.”

Mr Moore said his great grandfather would’ve been gobsmacked his small business in Henry Street lasted four generations.

“He would be staggered the businesses survived so long,” he said.

“It’s not what the company has done, it’s what has been done to the company.”

An auction of stock will be held next Thursday and Friday at 3 Keegan Street, O’Connor starting at 9am both days.

by BRENDAN FOSTER