Most of the San Group’s assets — including sawmills and a manufacturing plant in Port Alberni — are going up for sale today in a bid to recoup about $150 million for creditors under a process led by a court-appointed monitor.
sa国际传媒 Supreme Court Justice Michael Stevens also agreed Thursday to extend the company’s protection from creditors until May 30.
Monitor Deloitte Restructuring Inc., which received approval to start the sales process at a hearing in Vancouver, plans to develop a list of potential bidders and divide the company’s property into different offerings, hoping to maximize their value to help satisfy creditors.
The plan set May 30 for agreements with potential purchasers. That will be followed by court approval around June 16 and closing dates not later than June 30, said the monitor’s third report to the court. The sale would include assets of “every nature and kind” other than three entities, including the leased Acorn mill, manufacturing plant and other facilities in Delta, because of an outstanding fire-insurance claim for that site, and other entities because of claims from the Canadian Western Bank, another creditor.
Langley-based San Group, a major employer in Port Alberni, filed for creditor protection on Nov. 29.
Peter Rubin, lawyer for the monitor, told the court that the group appears to owe Royal Bank of sa国际传媒 about $110 million and Business Development Bank of sa国际传媒 about $40 million. The creditors list numbers in the hundreds.
Company owners have been generally co-operative with the monitor and provided a “material amount of information,” the monitor’s report said. But it said the monitor is seeking “more transparent, accurate and timely responses to questions and information.”
The monitor said no more time or resources should be spent trying to find what the San Group initially described as missing log booms worth $6 million in waters off Vancouver Island’s west coast. The logs were said to have disappeared in a Nov. 18 storm.
Rubin told the court he contacted several parties and was told they have not seen missing logs, were not told about them and did not believe the company would have had that amount of logs at the time of a November storm.
The company’s cash flow results for four weeks ending Jan. 10 came in below the forecast. Sales were predicted to be $1.126 million, but were just $587,029, the court was told.
