A HUGE first step will take place in the Dean Foods Chapter 11 Bankruptcy proceedings.
Dairy Farmers will get their payments for milk delivered in the month prior to the date of the Bankruptcy Filing, an almost unprecedented event. This news was confirmed by a Dean Foods source familiar with the situation on the evening of Thursday, November 14th.
Dean Foods announced on Tuesday, Nov. 12th, 2019, that it had initiated Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in the United States District and Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of Texas, Houston.
From the moment that filing became known, farmers, who are generally seen as unsecured creditors in a milk company bankruptcy, were extremely concerned that they would never receive payment for a month’s worth of milk. In hard dollars, this would be equal to tens of thousands of dollars to multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on the size of a producer’s herd.
In this case, officials in the Milk Procurement Division of Dean Foods advocated on behalf of payment for their producers. In a court document titled “Docket 29, Declaration of Robert Bruce Matson In Support of Debtors Motion to Pay Critical Vendors,” Matson, Dean’s Senior Director of Milk Procurement, lays out a brilliant and passionate case on why these farmers deserved payment.
Nationwide, this would have been a loss of several millions of dollars scheduled to flow into dairy farm communities across the country. Those monies in turn would pay farm employees, pay feed bills, machinery repair bills, and a host of other expenses related to farm business operations.
These payments are known to apply to independent producers who contract directly with Dean Foods – it is not yet verified if this also applies to co-op handlers. That will be clarified as quickly as possible. Also needing more certain clarification will be payment for Nov. 1-11 milk deliveries to milk plants. With the Nov. 12 filing date, all deliveries from that day forward will be secured as the company works through the Chapter 11 process.
The ability to make those payments, along with flexibility on how to make those distributions, was enabled by Court Orders entered on Wednesday evening, Nov. 13th, in US Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of Texas.
From that point on, it was up to Dean Foods officials to make determinations on what portions of the Settlement payment would indeed make their way to farms.
In an unprecedented bankruptcy in the dairy and food industry, an even rarer occurrence has taken place with this full payment being delivered to what the court defines as an unsecured creditor. Classification as ‘critical vendors’ helped achieve that end.
Officials at Dean Foods deserve an extraordinary amount of credit for taking farmers into consideration in their court documents and pleadings and getting this money to them which will be crucial for ongoing operations as the company determines a future. If you have the opportunity to say “Thanks” to any of them, please do so.
While we are a very long way from a more stable future in this Chapter 11 Reorganization of the country’s largest milk processor, this is a HUGE first hurdle to cross.
Before this very complex bankruptcy is over, there will be many ups and downs, good days and bad days, and unexpected twists and turns. But on this Day 3 of Bankruptcy proceedings, many farm families are breathing a lot easier.
We hope for a brighter future for both farmers supplying the plants, and the employees processing and distributing the milk.
This will be a ‘one step at a time process.’ More information will be shared as it becomes available
Timeline thus far in a rather fast-paced and frenzied week:
- Tuesday, Nov. 12th: Bankruptcy documents filed
- Wednesday, Nov. 13th: Court pleadings and Orders entered for ongoing operations
- Wednesday, Nov. 13th: By close of day, over 125 document filed on court’s docket in less than 48 hours.
- Thursday, Nov. 14th: Word received farmers would receive payment for their previous month’s milk.
- Monday, Nov. 18th: Payments expected to be delivered to farmers
We are most thankful to a God who has answered many prayers with this news. The prayers for wisdom and guidance continue as we work to a more stable future.
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