Hydro Services SA, a family business with about 30 employees in Adelaide, was voluntarily wound up late last week.

The business had provided cleaning services on a contract basis to a variety of major customers, including the new Royal Adelaide Hospital during its first months operating last year.

Owner Amila Samaraweera said his business was contracted to fill a shortfall when cleaning staff from the old RAH moved to work on the larger new hospital.

Hydro Services SA’s other contracts included Myer, Adelaide Airport, Electranet, IGA and Coles supermarkets, Tea Tree Gully Council (as a subcontractor) and Harris Scarfe.

Its services included window, carpet, flooring and upholstery cleaning, vinyl floor strip-and-seal, tile and grout steam cleaning and high-pressure surface cleaning.

Samaraweera said he had lost a series of contracts this year and decided to wind up Hydro Services SA to focus on another, smaller business – Hydro Group – which he said retained three or four cleaners on an ongoing basis and was part of a family trust.

This year, he said, “a lot of big companies hired themselves (their own cleaning staff)” instead of retaining Hydro Services SA.

He said he had built the business over the past five or six years since moving here from Sri Lanka in about 2008.

Liquidator Simon Nelson, of BPS Restructure and Recovery, was on leave and unavailable to comment this morning, a spokesperson for the firm said.