The firm operates out of a major facility in Dundee (above) and Dewsbury in West Yorkshire

Just 33 of the firms’s near 200-strong workforce are being retained in order to wind the business down and continue to trade the DuctMate subsidiary, which administrators from Ernst & Young will put up for sale.

The £23m turnover specialist engineering and metal fabricator split its head office functions between Dundee and Dewsbury in West Yorkshire.

In recent years, Galloway worked on some of the UK’s most iconic building projects, including The British Museum in London, The Millennium Dome, Glasgow’s Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome and the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh.

Galloway, which first started trading as tinsmiths in Dundee in 1872, was bought out by a management of five executives, led by managing director Jim Mathieson, back in 2008.

But the firm struggled with high debts and its final salary pension scheme.

Staff sent home from Galloway work shop in Dundee

A company board statement said: “The business has been under considerable pressure for a number of years. Demand in our traditional construction market has been very weak since 2012 and margins have been significantly reduced.

“In the recent past, the collapse of the oil and gas sector has applied further pressure. This has meant that the business has been loss making and under cash pressure.”

“The directors have worked tirelessly, and in good faith, to avoid insolvency through a number of initiatives, including cost cutting, modernising the business offering and raising finance,” said the statement.

“Efforts to raise finance are significantly impaired because of the high debt burden on the business from both previous borrowings and the final salary pension scheme.

“This is a very sad day for a long-established Dundee company and our thoughts and best wishes are with the employees and creditors of the business.”