A number of trucking firms, logistics companies and chilly storage suppliers are collectively owed hundreds of thousands of {dollars} after an Iowa-based frozen meat importer filed for Chapter 11 chapter safety not too long ago.
South American Beef Inc., headquartered in West Des Moines, filed its petition within the U.S. Chapter Courtroom for the Southern District of Iowa final week.
Based on its web site, Alejandra Vidal-Soler, president of SAB, based the corporate in 1999, alongside together with her husband, Scott Graham.
Their frozen import enterprise, bought beneath vendor manufacturers in addition to its personal Prairie Pure model, specializes within the buy, import and gross sales of beef, lamb, goat, mutton, veal, seafood and poultry from international locations together with Argentina, Uruguay, Australia, New Zealand, China and a few international locations in Central America.
In its submitting, SAB lists each its belongings and liabilities as between $10 million and $50 million. The petition states the corporate has as much as 99 collectors and maintains that funds might be obtainable for distribution to unsecured collectors as soon as it pays administrative charges.
Amongst SAB’s prime 20 unsecured collectors that deal with the corporate’s transportation and logistics endeavors within the U.S. are Scotlynn USA Division of Fort Myers, Florida, owed over $529,000; Holt Logistics Corp. of Gloucester Metropolis, New Jersey, owed almost $102,000; and TAFS Inc. of Houston, owed round $45,000.
The petition additionally lists three firms which are a part of temperature-controlled logistics large Lineage, headquartered in Novi, Michigan, as secured collectors with warehouseman’s liens in opposition to SAB’s frozen meals stock for nonpayment: Lineage Logistics of Pasadena, California, owed greater than $210,000; Lineage Transportation of Dallas, owed round $76,000; and Lineage Customized Brokerage of Tacoma, Washington, owed almost $60,000.
Americold Logistics of St. Louis, owed roughly $69,000, can be listed as a secured creditor.
Based on SAB, the meat importer’s gross revenues from Jan. 1 till its chapter submitting date are almost $57 million. Its petition states the corporate made round $96 million in 2021 and roughly $68 million in 2020.
Within the submitting, it lists JPMorgan Chase Financial institution of Chicago (Chase) as a secured creditor, offering the meat importer with a revolving line of credit score of greater than $14.4 million.
On Friday, U.S. Chapter Choose Anita L. Shodeen agreed to the meat importer’s first-day movement to honor pre-petition obligations to pay staff and gross sales commissions. Nevertheless, she denied that SAB might use “money collateral for cost of any expense objects listed on the funds that will lead to cost of a pre-petition obligation” owed by SAB, the submitting states.
Chase claims in courtroom paperwork that South American Beef has been in “default on its mortgage obligations” to the financial institution for greater than a yr and opposed the meat importer’s money collateral movement.
In the course of the time when SAB was in search of to refinance or pursue another transaction that will deal with the meat importer’s mortgage obligation to the financial institution, Chase continued to permit the corporate credit score extensions, “even funding out-of-formula overadvances from late August by means of early November,” the corporate acknowledged in courtroom filings.
The financial institution claims the meat importer “has been unable to repair its enterprise points, refinance its debt with Chase or promote its enterprise.
“As a substitute, throughout the time the state of affairs deteriorated additional, as Chase realized of mismanagement and questionable enterprise practices of [SAB] in violation of its mortgage settlement,” in keeping with the financial institution’s movement to disclaim the meat firm’s use of money collateral.
As of publication, Vidal-Soler, president of SAB, and the meat importer’s chapter lawyer, Jeffrey D. Goetz, had not responded to FreightWaves’ request in search of remark.
Chase states in its movement that it seems SAB intends to wind down and liquidate as the corporate’s “proposed four-week funds anticipates solely the sale of current stock and assortment of current receivables and doesn’t anticipate new stock purchases.”
A remaining listening to on the usage of money collateral is ready for Jan. 5.
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