Did you get a ‘Dean estate’ demand letter from ASK LLP? Respond with this simple, approved ‘Declaration’

Posted on December 20, 2020 by Agmoos

By Sherry Bunting, Farmshine, December 18, 2020

HARRISBURG, Pa. — U.S. Dairy producers and haulers who received letters from ASK LLP — the Dean Foods estate trustee seeking money back from producers and haulers paid prior to Dean’s bankruptcy filing Nov. 12, 2019 — should not pay, but will need to act on those letters. Many of the letters were received right before or after Thanksgiving and had deadlines of December 19 or 24.

Dairy producers and milk haulers have an air-tight defense, and now there is a simple one-page Declaration Letter any producer or hauler from any state can use as their response to ASK LLP. Explanation and form are downloadable at the Pa. Milk Marketing Board (PMMB) website at www.mmb.pa.gov or call the PMMB at 717-836-3115. (See below also.)

The Declaration Letters — one for producers (here at this link and pictured below) and one for haulers (here at this link) — were designed by PMMB chief counsel Doug Eberly — working with the state Attorney General’s office and verbally approved by ASK LLP for use by producers and haulers in all states.

“Please, please, please complete this Declaration Letter because it gets you off the hook. You will complicate matters if you don’t send them back,” said PMMB chairman Rob Barley in a Center for Dairy Excellence industry conference call December 10. “It will release you from this if you fill it out. We know it is an inconvenience, but if you don’t fill out the Declaration, you could risk losing that money.”

With hundreds of farmers on the Dec. 10 call, Eberly and others gave updates and answered questions. Here’s what you need to know:

1. Dairy farmers and milk haulers have an air-tight defense.

2. The Declaration Letters developed by PMMB for use in all states demonstrate this defense. Just fill in the blanks about how often milk was picked up and how long you shipped milk to Dean Foods, sign it and email or fax it back to ASK LLP.

3. The Declaration describes how payments for milk and transport are “ordinary course” of business.

4. The legal letters sent by ASK LLP to dairy farmers and haulers are ‘avoidance claims.’ These arise when a business nears the end of a bankruptcy proceeding. All payments made to creditors — including vendors and suppliers — in the 90 days prior to filing are liable for recovery, unless the recipient can show the payments they received were not preferential.

Eberly explained the theory is that some creditors of Dean Foods could have had bargaining power to get money pre-bankruptcy that was not available then to other creditors. This is known in bankruptcy law as “trustee avoidance.”

Bottomline: “ASK needs some kind of documentation from you because they have an obligation to the bankruptcy court to show — pursuant to the bankruptcy code — the things they are charged with doing as the trustee have been done,” said Eberly.

“Farmers kept shipping milk in good faith and kept getting paid for the milk in order for Dean to stay in business,” said Eberly. “If you are a producer or hauler, you received payments in ordinary course of business with Dean. They picked up your milk every day or every other day or you shipped it to them … and they paid you twice a month as the Federal and State Milk Marketing Orders specify. We wrote this in the Declaration that you can fill out, sign and send back to ASK LLP. Doing this, you will demonstrate to the trustee that you do not owe this money back because you were not paid in any preferential way when you got paid.”

In addition to the state Attorney General’s office, PMMB worked with the Pa. Secretary of Agriculture, Center for Dairy Excellence, American Farm Bureau and organizations and individuals from other states.

“ASK LLP has taken a lot of heat on this, and they want to get this behind them because farm groups came together to back the farmers,” said Barley. “We’ve worked with anyone who is able to help as we reached out to other states and they reached out to us and this helps them as well. We are unique to have PMMB in Pennsylvania, and this is a time it has shown brightly to have this in Pennsylvania.”

Eberly noted the insurance bond held by Dean, as is law in Pennsylvania, has already been exercised during the bankruptcy to pay producers, so it would not have been available to help farmers in this situation.

Pa. State Representative Frank Ryan of Lebanon County was also on the call. He specialized in bankruptcy as a certified public accountant before being voted into the state legislature. “These types of ‘demand letters’ are common in bankruptcies,” said Ryan. “They are trying to determine a ‘preference period’. I can’t imagine that any dairy producer got any preference payment or was treated better than someone else (ahead of the bankruptcy).”

Ryan gave an example: “Say I am owed money by Dean for services (as a CPA) on a 90-day invoice. And say you as a farmer did a contemporaneous exchange of something of value (milk) for payment and you are paid every 14 days. You get preference over me. That’s ordinary business. But, if Dean paid me ahead as a CPA for a 90-day invoice instead of you for that contemporaneous exchange of milk for payment, then the trustee would come back to me for payment.

“The Declaration Letters are intended to help producers demonstrate that they do not have to pay that money back,” he said.

If someone went ahead and paid the settlement offer in the ASK LLP letter, Ryan said it may be difficult to get that money back. Using the Declaration and hiring an attorney might be successful to get a settlement payment back. American Farm Bureau and others are looking into this to determine if any producers paid the settlement offer in the letter.

Specific questions and answers handled in the group call Dec. 10 include:

Q. Do the documents on the PMMB website at www.mmb.pa.gov only apply to Pennsylvania, or can other farms from other states send them in?

A. “It is very important that everyone know about these forms because farmers and haulers from other states can use them,” Barley answered.

“We did not make these forms PA-specific,” said Eberly, noting that he has talked with folks from the Kentucky Dairy Development Council, Vermont Attorney General’s office, Michigan Department of Agriculture, and AgriVoice on behalf of several entities in Tennessee.

Q. If I filed a critical vendor contract with the bankruptcy court to be paid during the bankruptcy, is that enough to prove I did not get preferential payments before the bankruptcy?

A. Short answer: No. Eberly stated he is not giving legal advice; however, the critical vendor agreements signed by dairy producers and haulers were standard forms that do not address the points ASK is asking for. On the other hand, the Declarations PMMB got approved are specific to the way milk plants do business with farmers and haulers.

“If you are a dairy producer, the way you prove you did not get preferential payments is you either send all the records that ASK LLP has asked you for, or you send in the Declaration Letter we put together to take care of it. This Declaration Letter is the most efficient way to do that,” said Eberly.

Q. Do the Declaration Letters PMMB provided need to be submitted by an attorney?

A. The Declaration Letter is designed in a way that a dairy producer or hauler can simply fill it out and send it back by email, fax or postal mail — on their own.

Eberly explained that while a person or corporation can’t really represent itself in bankruptcy court, only through an attorney, these Declaration Letters are not going directly to the bankruptcy court. They are going to the law firm (ASK LLP) and will be part of what they show as fulfilling their obligation with the court as trustee.

Q. Who, specifically should the Declaration be sent to?

A. At the top of every demand letter received from ASK LLP is the name, phone number and email address for the paralegal to which your file number has been assigned. Different letters have different names their ‘matter’ has been assigned to. Email your signed Declaration to that person, said Eberly.

There is also a fax number on your packet. That number is 651.406.9676. “Be sure to put the fax to the attention of the paralegal that has been assigned to your particular file,” said Eberly. (If using postal mail, get delivery confirmation or certify the letter.)

Q. Who should sign the Declaration?

A. Whomever has authority to sign on behalf of the farm or hauling business — whether as a single-family sole proprietor, multi-owner LLC or incorporated business — should sign the Declaration.

In general, said Eberly, if three members of an LLC sign other documents for the farm, then they would sign this. If one person for an incorporated farm signs other types of documents, then that’s the person who would sign this. If a farm received separate letters for separate farm locations, return a Declaration Letter in response to each letter received from ASK LLP.

If more than one person legally signs documents for the farm, just cross out ‘I’ and write in ‘we’ with a pen. Do not retype the Declaration, according to Eberly.

Q. Do I need to send anything with the Declaration?

A. The PMMB’s understanding is that filling out the one page Declaration Letter, alone, is sufficient.

Q. What happens if we do not respond to the letter from ASK LLP? Is it possible the entire claim will be dropped on its own?

A. Everyone on the call stated that ignoring the letter is unwise and risky.

“I would caution you not to ignore the letter,” said Rep. Ryan. “Absent the response with this Declaration, it will be in the hands of the court. If you ignore it, and they determine you owe the money, you will get an immediate judgment against you and they (the bankruptcy court) have incredibly powerful ways to get those funds.”

With the Declaration available, there’s no reason to ignore this. Dairy producers and haulers have an efficient, simple way to take a big step to put this behind them.

Q. What is the deadline to submit the Declaration Letter?

A. Submit it by the date on your letter from ASK LLP. Some say Dec. 19, others Dec. 24. Whatever your date is, submit your Declaration by that date. As Dean estate trustee, ASK LLP, will begin filing these claims with the bankruptcy court in January.

Q. Do I need to submit a Declaration Letter if I provided a paralegal with their requested information already?

A. “I would call the paralegal and ask if they had a chance to look at it and make a determination, and I would also submit the Declaration Letter just to be on the safe side,” said Eberly.

Q. What should lenders and others do who received assignments from milk checks direct from Dean Foods if they received these letters?

A. Since everyone is operating under the belief that producers won’t owe money back, then their assignees should not owe money back either because the assign would not have been paid except for the farmer getting paid.

Eberly noted that lenders have access to legal people and accountants to answer questions for them, but producers who had money paid directly to someone out of their milk check should contact them to see if they got a letter and tell them what is being done. Contact the paralegal listed on the ASK letter and let that person know your assignee got a letter and to piggyback your Declaration to cover them as an assignment from your milk check.

A longer version of this article appears here.

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UPDATE on Dean trustee letters demanding payment from farmers. Don’t pay. Gather records. Fight back.

Posted on December 3, 2020 by Agmoos

BREAKING UPDATE (events on Dec. 4 after this article was published): Farm Bureau issued statement, stands up for producers. Farm Bureau attorneys sent a letter to ASK LLP and Dean Estate seeking withdrawal of preference demand letters within 10 days. The Pennsylvania Milk Marketing Board (PMMB) is working with the State Attorney General’s office and ASK LLP to resolve avoidance claim settlement offers received by dairy farmers and milk haulers. PMMB says ‘be patient, don’t sign anything and don’t write any checks.’ PMMB expects to provide specific guidance to dairy farmers and haulers prior to the December 10 Dairy Industry Conference Call sponsored by the Center for Dairy Excellence. The call will be open to dairy producers outside of Pa. as well.

Don’t ignore these letters. But don’t pay the settlement offers. Sit tight. Gather records.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. This is more of ‘what we know now’ in a rapidly evolving story. The Pennsylvania Attorney General is involved. Other states are mobilizing to perhaps work together. USDA AMS Dairy Programs is now referring all inquiries to the Department of Justice. American Farm Bureau is taking action. Please know that as dairy farmers, you have produced milk that was paid for according to federal and state milk marketing laws, that provided nourishment to families and that has enabled the Dean Foods Company to continue to operate until it was sold. Without you and those payments to you, Dean would have had to abruptly close, and the estate would have nothing.

By Sherry Bunting, Farmshine, Dec. 4, 2020

BROWNSTOWN, Pa. — Most of the letters descended on dairy farms the day before and after Thanksgiving with due dates of December 19 or December 24. More were received this week, and it is expanding to include assignees. No, these are not Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas John and Jane Q. Dairy Farmer. These are thinly veiled attempts at blackmail — demands to pay the Dean Foods Company estate a portion of milk checks from August 14 through November 12, 2019 in order to avoid being sued for much larger, scarier, sums of money.

ASK LLP, the St. Paul, Minn. law firm approved in September to be the Dean estate trustee, conjured up the ‘ghost of milk payments past’ to extort money from dairy farmers for the big bottler’s bankrupt estate by threatening lawsuits to reclaim payments to dairy farmers during what is known as the ‘preference’ period.

These are called ‘preference action recovery’ or ‘trustee avoidance’ claims. This is the legal basis for the action the letters threaten will occur if farmers don’t pay the ‘settlement offer’ or negotiate it with a satisfactory defense by the due date.

In layman’s terms, the claim is that a defendant farmer (Dean Foods creditor) could have received a pre-bankruptcy payment for milk that could have been a better deal than the ‘trustee’ would have divvied out.

Wrong. Federal and state law set forth dates and formulas for milk payments as a requirement for Class I beverage milk companies to operate. That money has already been spent by dairy farmers keeping cows fed and keeping lights on at farms already beleaguered by five years of marginal and below breakeven prices. No windfall there.

The intimidating letters show ways to assert a defense — through hiring a bankruptcy attorney and showing 15 to 18 months worth of invoices. But it’s cumbersome for farmers. They don’t invoice for their milk!

Of course, they want producers to just pay the settlement offer at a reduced rate, as stated in the letter, to avoid legal action commencing the week after the due date. (Don’t.)

Did I mention the due dates are December 19 for some; December 24 for others?

Did I mention farmers have 21 days from the date of the letter to respond with a defense and 30 days (now down to 14 to 20 days remaining) to sign the ‘settlement offers’ with checks payable to Dean Foods Company or risk – says the letter – paying amounts 5 to 6 times higher? People are still receiving these letters, given the Thanksgiving holiday and backlogged post offices. Some producers may not have opened them. The envelopes are non-descript.

In one example, a family milking 100 cows received a packet with a settlement offer of $20,000 placed next to the threat of paying over $110,000. Larger family farms face even larger sums. This is predatory intimidation to push farmers to send money that the bankrupt Dean estate is not entitled to. Yes, it is extortion.

So what happened? On the day before and after Thanksgiving, notices of Intended Litigation and Settlement Offers were received by dairy farmers from ASK LLP representing the Dean Foods Company estate. The action covers payments by the former Dean Foods to independent dairy farmers for raw milk sales from August 14 to November 12, 2019 — the 90 days prior to Dean’s filing on Nov. 12, 2019 for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and sale.

This is a little-known part of bankruptcy law where the estate trustee can go back 90 days before a filing to collect payments believed to be ‘preferential.’

Farmshine has confirmed letters were received by Dean Dairy Direct producers in numerous states — including Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, Kentucky, Tennessee, and assuredly others.

The letters list payment transactions (on the Federal Order specified dates), a total claim amount the farmer will be sued for, and a settlement offer at about 15 to 20% of that amount due December 19 or 24, 2020 (depending on the date of the letter).

Under Southern Foods Group LLC, case number 19-36313 in the bankruptcy court of Houston, Texas, with Judge David R. Jones presiding, the Dean Chapter 11 reorganization is headed to an omnibus hearing scheduled for Dec. 11, 2020 and disclosure hearing Jan. 11, 2021. Debtor filed its Plan of Reorganization Nov. 30 as file number 3230 on the docket at https://dm.epiq11.com/case/dnf/info (The Milksheds blog offers additional happenings of context and perspective here.)

If you are a dairy farmer who received a ‘demand package’ from ASK LLP representing the Dean estate, don’t ignore this, but don’t panic, don’t pay anything, don’t sign anything, sit tight for a bit, get prepared by gathering records (milk statements, contracts) and know that many trustworthy, well-situated people are working on this.

These letters are an intimidating threat to see what ‘other people’s money’ the law firm can shake loose for the Dean estate after the fire sale in which the bulk of assets were sold to Dairy Farmers of America (DFA).

In an email Wednesday, DFA, a large supplier of former Dean plants they now own, indicated that they did not receive these legal preference action letters.

“As part of the Asset Purchase Agreement, and as a result of a broad release of claims against each other, Dean Foods released DFA from these potential claims,” a DFA representative stated. “Ultimately, we had no idea that the Dean estate was planning to make these claims against independent producers. It’s disappointing that they sould take this kind of aggressive action against hard-working dairy farm families who supplied them with milk prior to the filing.”

The cooperative indicated in a statement that it “DFA does not control the actions or decisions of Dean Foods in its bankruptcy liquidation and was not involved with the decision to pursue these claims.”

Among other cooperatives doing business with the former Dean plants, at least one regional cooperative executive confirmed receiving a letter six weeks ago for dairy ingredient sales (cream and condensed milk) during the 90-day pre-bankruptcy time-period. They have not agreed to nor negotiated any settlement, but they provided their volumes and documentation of these sales to ASK LLP through their bankruptcy attorneys — and are monitoring the situation.

This source also believes other regional cooperatives received letters pertaining to pre-bankruptcy raw milk and ingredient sales.

On Tuesday, we confirmed that a milk hauler received a letter, and at least two entities receiving “assignments” direct from a producer’s milk check have received letters. This goes deep, and it is getting deeper.

The letters mention two potential defenses in a separate “additional instructions” piece, urging producers to “make a copy of this letter and all enclosures to send to your attorney should you choose to defend this matter rather than settle and return the payments.”

Even the ‘instructions’ intimidate the dairy farmer to feel they might have some financial obligation to the Dean Estate (absurd).

The instructions state: “Under certain circumstances you may have a defense warranting settlement of this action at less than the settlement offer extended. We will be happy to consider your defense and ‘explore’ settlement.”

Media calls and emails to several undersigned representatives at ASK LLP have gone unanswered.

Questions posed to USDA AMS Dairy Programs have been met with a blanket response that they are looking into the situation and would be providing a general ‘official’ description of how Federal Orders govern payments for Class I milk in relation to producers showing ‘ordinary course of business’ defense. After all, USDA FMMO market administrators have the specified dates and regulations posted at each of the 11 FMMO websites, and the dates correspond with the payments made to producers as listed in these predatory preference action letters.

USDA has not confirmed nor denied whether market administrators received similar letters regarding payments Dean made to producer settlement funds in the pre-bankruptcy period.

Late Tuesday evening, USDA stated in an email that, “We’re forwarding all media inquiries on this matter to the Department of Justice press office.” This indicates the DOJ is potentially also looking at the concerns surrounding these predatory attempts to intimidate farmers into sending payments to Dean Foods.

In Pennsylvania, where over 100 dairy farmers are affected by the letters, the State Attorney General is involved. Pennsylvania has the added layer of Class I pricing regulation through the Pa. Milk Marketing Law enforced by the Pa. Milk Marketing Board (PMMB).

“The PMMB wants to make sure every Pa. dairy farmer is treated fairly,” states Rob Barley, chairman. “I have complete trust in the PMMB staff in consultation with the Attorney General that this will ultimately happen. We will do all we can in our power to ensure that it does.”

Expressing her concern for dairy farmers receiving these letters with a short time-frame for response at a difficult time, Carol Hardbarger, PMMB executive secretary confirmed late Monday that, “The Pennsylvania State Attorney General’s office is aware of these letters.”

Hardbarger noted that the PMMB board and staff sprang into action with a joint meeting Monday morning after learning about the legal actions over the weekend. They have been working on it ever since. She provided at Farmshine’s request a description of how payments to Pennsylvania farms by Pennsylvania-regulated plants are governed at the state level — in addition to Federal Order rules.

“Dairy farmers selling milk to a dairy processor and being paid per federal and state regulations is a paradigm that is ordinary course of business for the industry,” states PMMB chief counsel Doug Eberly. As with anything, he adds, there may be the odd deviation in that, but he can’t think of any leading to a trustee avoidance claim.

Both Eberly and Hardbarger stressed that the PMMB is working on this within the scope of their authority and working with the State Attorney General’s office as several producers in the eastern and western parts of the state have stepped forward to provide copies to PMMB of the legal packets they received.

More will be discussed as regards Pennsylvania producers at the upcoming Dairy Industry Conference call next Thursday, Dec. 10 where Eberly and Barley will speak.

Other state organizations are reaching out to Farmshine as they learn what Pennsylvania is doing. Even without a milk marketing board, producers and their organizations in other states can contact their Agriculture Secretaries or Commissioners, even lawmakers, and ask that their State Attorneys General look into these surprise legal notices and payment demands and the predatory nature of them.

While stopping short of giving legal advice, Eberly said there are some general points for producers to know within this rapidly evolving situation:

1) Absolutely don’t pay anything now. (And don’t sign anything without consulting an attorney.

2) Start gathering deposit records for the 3-month period identified in the letter (Aug. 14 – Nov. 12, 2020) and the 15 months prior to that (as stated in the letter), so you have this information ready.

3) Don’t worry about putting anything into the requested formats mentioned in the letter, just get these items together for now.

4) Know that the Pennsylvania State Attorney General’s office is aware of these letters.

“The ordinary course of business affirmative defense means that the vast majority of farmers most likely will owe nothing, we just have to get them there in the most efficient way possible,” said Eberly.

More key takeaways for dairy farmers in this rapidly evolving situation here:

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Milk payment process officially described, relevant to Dean trustee ‘avoidance claims’ seeking partial payback from farmers.

Posted on December 3, 2020 by Agmoos

By Sherry Bunting, Farmshine, December 4, 2020

BROWNSTOWN, Pa. – In addition to dairy producers, those receiving assigned amounts directly from producer milk checks, such as haulers, have begun receiving these letters of ‘preference action recovery.’ The wide net being cast by ASK LLP as trustee for the Dean Foods Company estate — in search of money to pay bankruptcy administration costs — may become a web of entanglement.

USDA AMS Dairy Programs has not confirmed nor denied whether Market Administrators for the 11 Federal Milk Marketing Order (FMMO) Producer Settlement Funds (PSF) have received letters from ASK LLP or whether Dean’s pre-bankruptcy payments to them have been made subject to these trustee avoidance claims. If so, this would produce another wrinkle.

While USDA AMS is now referring to the Department of Justice all inquiries about the bankrupt Dean Foods estate trustee letters intimidating farmers to repay a portion of their Aug – Nov 2019 milk checks, the USDA did respond late Wednesday evening to Farmshine’s request for a general official description of FMMO milk payment procedures and dates.

This could be helpful to affected dairy producers because the twice monthly transaction dates listed in the letters correspond directly with these official descriptions — showing pre-bankruptcy payments to farmers, and their milk check assignees, are not only ‘ordinary course of business’ and ‘customary for the industry’, but also regulated by Federal Orders.

In Pennsylvania, there is the added layer of the Pennsylvania Milk Marketing Law enforced by the Pa. Milk Marketing Board (PMMB).

PMMB executive secretary Carol Hardbarger provided a synopsis from state statute regarding how PA-regulated plants pay farmers for milk. There are seven Dean plants that are licensed dealers regulated under PMMB, four of these plants are located in Pennsylvania. All seven are now owned by Dairy Farmers of America (DFA) as part of the Southern Foods Group LLC (Dean Foods and holdings) bankruptcy sale.

The PMMB is recommending that farmers do not pay the settlement offers in these letters, and sit tight for further guidance. In Pennsylvania, the State Attorney General is involved. The PMMB chief counsel and Attorney General’s office plan to communicate with ASK LLP this week.

USDA’s FMMO milk payment description follows:

“In general, handlers report monthly to the FMMO (Federal Milk Marketing Orders) their receipts and utilization of producer milk from the previous month. The receipts include the skim and fat pounds of the milk, as well as its average monthly component tests (protein, other solids, nonfat solids) in the component orders. Utilization reports include how such butterfat and skim milk (including components) were used during that month.

“The FMMO office computes the uniform butterfat price and the uniform skim milk price in the four fat and skim pricing orders (FO 5, FO 6, FO 7, and FO 131) and the producer price differential (PPD) in the seven component pricing orders. These prices are computed based upon the total value of milk in the producer milk received and utilized by all handlers pooling on the Order for the month.

“Reporting and price announcement dates are set in regulation and vary by order (see attached chart). For example, for Orders 5, 6, and 7 (Southeast, Florida and Appalachian Orders), producer prices are released on or before the 11th of the month for the previous month, while the announced producer prices for the Northeast order could occur as late as the 17th of the month for the previous month.

“Each handler with pooled milk for the marketing period receives an accounting from the Market Administrator, indicating their plant(s) use value for the month along with the associated payments due to producers for that milk. If a plant use value is greater than the producer payments, the difference is due to the Producer Settlement Fund (PSF) of that respective Order.

“A handler whose plant use value is lower than the producer payments owed will receive a payment from the PSF to allow them to make the producer payments in a timely fashion. Th above reporting and payment date chart lists when payments are due to and from the PSF.

“Final payments to producers and cooperatives are made a day or two after the payments from the producer settlement fund are made.

“Each of the 11 orders requires (advance) payments by handlers for the milk received during the first 15 days of the month a week or two after the 15th of the month.“

For Pennsylvania regulated plants, payment due dates are outlined in Milk Marketing Law Regulation 143.12 as follows:

§ 143.12. Terms of payment.

“(a) Producers shall be paid not later than the 26th day of each month and the 17th day of the following month, as follows:

“(1) Payment that covers the approximate value of milk or cream purchased from the first to the 15th of each month shall be made not later than the 26th day of each month. This payment need not be accompanied by an itemized statement. This payment shall be at least the lowest announced class price for the previous month for the number of pounds purchased or received during the first 15 days of the month.

“(2) Final settlement for all milk and cream purchased during any month shall be made not later than the 17th day of the following month. The final settlement shall include any balances due for the first 15-day period and shall be accompanied by a statement to each producer setting forth the information required under § 143.14 (relating to monthly statement to producers).“

Ghost of milk payments past invoked as intimidating letters seek money from farmers for big bottler’s bankrupt estate: Don’t pay. Don’t panic. Don’t sign anything. Sit tight. Gather records.

Posted on December 1, 2020 by Agmoos

BREAKING NEWS UPDATES 4:00 – 9:00 p.m. Dec 2: Updates after the essential background article below, appear in separate articles here and here.

USDA is forwarding inquiries about ‘preference action’ letters to DOJ. In PA, the Attorney General’s office is involved.

By Sherry Bunting for Farmshine

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice, but researched information based on many people working on the issue. This is a ‘what we know now’ pre-press preview of a rapidly evolving story, check Friday’s Farmshine and this link for updates, including information about a conference call for dairy farmers in Pennsylvania and open to affecte producers outside of PA (call details here); other states also mobilizing!

BROWNSTOWN, Pa. — Notices of Intended Litigation and Settlement Offers have been received by dairy farmers last week from ASK LLP, a law firm in St. Paul, Minn., seeking payment to the Dean Foods Company Estate under what is known as preference action recovery or trustee avoidance claims covering payments to dairy farmers for raw milk (and co-ops for ingredients) from August 14 to November 12, 2019 — the 90 days prior to Dean’s Nov. 12, 2019 filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and sale.

We have confirmed these predatory letters have been received by Dean Dairy Direct producers in numerous states – including Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, Kentucky, Tennessee and assuredly others — on the day before and after Thanksgiving. These letters contain a record of payment transactions (on the Federal Order specified dates), list a total claim amount the farmer will be sued for, and a settlement offer at about 15 to 20% of that amount due December 19 or 24, 2020 (depending on the date of the letter).

Under Southern Foods Group LLC, case number 19-36313 in the bankruptcy court of Houston, Texas, with Judge David R. Jones presiding, the Dean Chapter 11 reorganization is headed to an omnibus hearing scheduled for Dec. 11, 2020 and disclosure hearing Jan. 11, 2021. Debtor filed its Plan of Reorganization as file number 3230 today, Nov. 30, on the docket at https://dm.epiq11.com/case/dnf/info

If you are a dairy farmer who received a ‘demand package’ from ASK LLP representing the Dean Foods Company Estate, don’t ignore the letter, but don’t panic, don’t pay anything, don’t sign anything, sit tight for a bit, get prepared, and know many trustworthy, well-situated people are working on this.

The letters and legal packets are an intimidating threat to see what ‘other people’s money’ the law firm can shake loose for the Dean Foods Estate after the fire sale in which the bulk of assets were sold to Dairy Farmers of America (DFA). For its part, DFA as the new owner of the bulk of Dean’s plants issued a statement that it does not control Dean’s decisions on their bankruptcy and did not participate in this decision.

The letters do mention two potential defenses in a separate “additional instructions” piece, urging producers to “make a copy of this letter and all enclosures to send to your attorney should you choose to defend this matter rather than settle and return the payments.”

The instructions go on to state: “Under certain circumstances you may have a defense warranting settlement of this action at less than the settlement offer extended. We will be happy to consider your defense and ‘explore’ settlement.”

Even in that statement the ‘instructions’ intimidate the dairy farmer receiving it to feel they might have some financial obligation to the Dean Estate (absurd).

Please know that as dairy farmers, you have produced milk that was paid for according to federal and state milk marketing laws, that provided nourishment to families and that has enabled the Dean Foods Company to continue to operate until it was sold.

What’s happening and what dairy farmers should know:

First. Know that you are not alone and stay tuned. A range of emotions and reactions are no doubt happening on receipt of these letters.

Second. Don’t panic, don’t pay, don’t sign, and hold off in hiring an attorney. If you already have a trusted attorney advisor, talk to them, but these letters are concerning from a collective perspective. They name individual farms as defendants and demand a refund of a portion of what they were paid for milk they produced and shipped to Dean, that was bottled by Dean and sold by Dean in the 90 days BEFORE Dean filed for bankruptcy protection.

The situation may ultimately require farms to individually hire a bankruptcy attorney to assert a defense and prove qualification for exemption. But, well-situated sources indicate that it is also possible that collective group action could occur. More answers are needed by authorities and interested parties.

Yes, this preference recovery action is a loophole in bankruptcy law with farms caught in the shakedown net cast by the law firm working for the Dean Estate. There are concerning aspects based on how dairy farms are paid via federal and state laws that preclude the normal business activities of “invoicing.”

In Pennsylvania, the Pa. Milk Marketing Board is looking into this, and the State Attorney General’s office is aware of these letters. Dairy farmers selling milk to a dairy processor and being paid per federal/state regulations is ordinary course of business.

Third. Sit tight but use this time to be prepared by gathering milk statements for the past 15 to 18 months. Many trustworthy and reputable people are working on this issue affecting hundreds of independent dairy farms, and entities to which portions of their milk checks were assigned.

Sources indicate regional cooperatives may have received such letters for raw milk sales, though none have confirmed this. USDA has not confirmed nor denied whether market administrators received similar letters regarding producer settlement fund payments in the pre-bankruptcy period.

One regional cooperative executive has confirmed receiving a letter six weeks ago in relation to ingredient sales during the 90-day pre-bankruptcy time-period and indicates other regional co-ops have as well. They have not agreed to nor negotiated any settlement, but they provided their volumes and documentation of these sales to the soliciting law firm through their bankruptcy attorneys — and are monitoring the situation.

Dairy farmers can do the same.

Absolutely don’t pay or sign anything right now.
Start gathering deposit records for the 3-month period (Aug 14 – Nov 12, 2019) plus the 15 months before that as stated in the letter’s instructions about potential defense assertions.
Don’t worry about putting any of this information into the requested spreadsheet or other formats mentioned in the letter, just get these items together for now.
The Pennsylvania Attorney General’s office is aware of these letters. Producers in other states could look at involving the offices of their Secretaries of Agriculture and/or Attorneys General.
The ordinary course of business affirmative defense means that the vast majority of farmers most likely will owe nothing, and people are working on how to get producers to that point in the most efficient way possible.

Fourth. Know that USDA AMS Dairy Programs has been contacted and is looking into the matter. Know that every one of the Federal Milk Marketing Order websites shows the strict dates and procedures concerning payment for milk. Dean Foods – or Southern Foods Group LLC as it is named covering all holdings in the bankruptcy case #19-36313 – could not have operated nor could it have been sold to yield any funds for the estate had the farmers not been paid for the milk sold.

Fifth. Know that in Pennsylvania, the Pa. Milk Marketing Board (PMMB) became involved immediately. The board and staff started their day Monday morning with a joint meeting on this issue that was brought to their attention over the weekend. Know that they have begun a conversation with Pennsylvania’s State Attorney General who is looking into this and is already familiar with some of the elements having been involved in getting final payments arranged using the mandatory bond insurance Pennsylvania requires all licensed milk dealers to carry. Know that in Pennsylvania, milk plants follow state payment and bonding regulations in addition to federal orders. Know that there are seven Dean Foods plants regulated by PMMB because they receive milk produced on Pennsylvania farms, and four of these plants are located in Pennsylvania.

Know that producers outside of Pennsylvania can band together and through their state dairy organizations or Secretaries of Agriculture – ask their State Attorneys General to look at this.

Sixth. Know that other well-situated people are looking into a way for all affected producers to fight this together instead of each farm going it alone and having the expense of hiring legal counsel with bankruptcy experience to “assert” their defense in writing to the law firm ASK LLP (aka Ebenezer Scrooge).

Seventh. Know that answers to various questions and concerns are being sought. More will be learned in the coming days, and the situation is one that is rapidly evolving.

Eighth. Know that ASK LLP should know better. The Dean estate trustee should already know that these dairy farmer critical vendor payments are not “preferential” payments warranting trustee avoidance claims. Not only should they know the critical vendors of Dean Foods — since the bankruptcy judge issued orders that dairy farmers be paid as critical vendors during the proceedings so Dean could operate and be sold – they should know that Judge David R. Jones in hearings on several occasions stated his big concern that school children would continue to receive their milk and dairy farmers would continue to be paid during the bankruptcy proceedings.

ASK LLP should know that the very charts they included in their ‘demand packages’ — showing all transfers from Dean plants to individual ‘defendant’ dairy farmers — are made on the precise same dates twice a month as is the regulation for milk payments under Federal Orders.

Ninth. Know that Bankruptcy Judge David R. Jones’ office in Houston, Texas has been notified of the ‘demand packages’ sent to dairy farmers for the pre-petition period. Several high-profile members of the U.S. House and Senate Agriculture Committees have also been notified.

BACKGROUND: The letters descended on dairy farms the day before and after Thanksgiving with due dates of December 19 or December 24. No, these were not Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas John and Jane Q Dairy Farmer, these were thinly veiled attempts at blackmail – demands to pay Dean Foods Company Estate a portion of milk checks from August 14 through November 12, 2019 in order to avoid being sued for much larger sums of money.

Ebenezer Scrooge (ASK LLP) conjured up the ghost of Dean Bankruptcy Past to insinuate that monetary transfers from Dean to dairy farmers — or their assigns — in return for milk they received, processed and sold, were ‘preferential’ resulting in what are called Trustee Avoidance claims by the law firm purported to represent Southern Foods Group LLC the conglomerate name for the bankruptcy and sale of Dean and all of its holdings.

A Trustee Avoidance claim – the legal action that the letters state will occur after the due date for payment of the settlement offer – indicate that such payments to farms could have been ‘preferential’ to avoid the bankruptcy trustee making sure all creditors are treated fairly. In layman’s terms, the claim is that a defendant farmer’s payment for milk pre-bankruptcy could have been a ‘better deal’ than the ‘trustee’ would have divvied out.

Wrong. Federal and state law set forth dates and formulas for milk payments as a requirement for milk companies to operate. That money has already been spent by dairy farmers keeping cows fed and keeping lights on at farms already beleaguered by five years of marginal and below breakeven prices. No windfall there.

Sure, the intimidating packet shows ways a recipient can assert their defense – through hiring a bankruptcy attorney. They can show invoices for those three months – and the 15 months before that – to show “ordinary course of business.” They can assert their defense with milk check statements the scrooge law firm says must be supplied in Excel spreadsheets requiring certain types of entries and documentation. Or they can just pay the settlement offer at a reduced rate to avoid legal action commencing the week after the due date.

Did I mention the due dates are December 19 for some; December 24 for others?

Did I mention farmers have 21 days from the date of the letter to sign and pay the ‘settlement offers’ with checks payable to Dean Foods Company or risk – says the letter – paying amounts 5 to 6 times higher?

Yes. This is what intimidation looks like, a shakedown to see what they can get away with, what money can be extorted, to improve their cut on the deal by threatening hard-working, nose-to-the-grindstone dairy farmers with big numbers, big words, and big assumptions.

They know better, and if they don’t, they should.

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Milk industry transformer, ex-Dean CEO Engles leads team winning bid for Borden

Posted on June 17, 2020 by Agmoos

‘New Dairy’ announced as winning bidder for all assets June 15. UPDATE: Sale hearing rescheduled a second time, now set for June 23 at 11 a.m. EDT in Delaware Bankruptcy Court. Milk cooperative SMI files post-auction objection, noting several irregularities with the auction process that had gone private in final days. SMI asserts that their bid on the Winterhaven, Florida plant was not appropriately considered, that they were ignored in the “behind the scenes” negotiations between Borden (debtor) and several other bidders, and that potentially other bidders were also left out of the process due to an alleged lack of transparency and lack of contract and other information needed to formulate appropriate bids.

Borden milk plants throughout the Southeast, mid-South as far north as Ohio are important for dairy producers like these pictured at the London, Kentucky plant chugging the delicious Borden dutch process chocolate milk during a July 2015 Kentucky Young Producers tour sponsored by KDDC. File photo by Sherry Bunting

By Sherry Bunting, Farmshine, June 19, 2020 edition

WILMINGTON, Del. — A team led by Gregg Engles — the transformative ex-CEO of what was modern-day Dean Foods — is poised to gain control of Borden Dairy Company, which includes six of the 11 plants the DOJ required Engles’ Suiza / Dean merger to divest in 2001 to then DFA-led National Dairy.

Pending bankruptcy court approval, the Borden Dairy Company and its iconic mascot Elsie will be purchased by New Dairy OpCo, LLC. The company referred to as “New Dairy” in court documents was formed June 1 by KKR & Co., a major creditor in the Borden bankruptcy joining forces with Capitol Peak Partners, a firm founded by Engles and his partner Ed Fugger, a former executive with Engles in the 2012 Dean spin off WhiteWave.

Borden named New Dairy as the successful bidder in bankruptcy court documents filed Monday afternoon, June 15.

A sale hearing is rescheduled for Thursday, June 19 (now rescheduled to June 23) in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court of Delaware with Judge Christopher Sontchi presiding.

The price to acquire Borden was not disclosed, but creditor KKR offered its sizable debt in the purchase of the assets, according to court documents.

The assets include Borden’s 12 plants in nine states from Ohio through the deep South and Southeast, 91 branches and other assets, as well as the Borden mascot Elsie.

Named by Borden as next-high bidder was GH Acquisitions and Prairie Farms Dairy. On May 1, Prairie Farms, the Illinois-based cooperative marketing products in 14 states, had successfully purchased eight former Dean Foods plants as part of the Southern Foods Group bankruptcy in Houston.

Sources indicate that if the Borden sale to New Dairy is approved by the bankruptcy court Friday, Gregg Engles is the likely new chairman.

Engles, a 1980s Dallas-based ice company consolidator has been referred to as “the great consolidator” turned “milkman to the nation.” He has been credited in various writings with the transformation and consolidation of the fluid milk business, a process that began when he and his partners purchased Suiza Dairy in San Juan, Puerto Rico in the early 1990s.

Engles built Suiza up to over 60 plants by methodically buying the leading plant in a region and those around it to streamline at a time when Wal-Mart and other companies were consolidating the retail grocery sector.

In 2001, Dallas-based Suiza was the largest milk company acquiring the number two Chicago-based Dean Foods. The merged companies operated under the Dean Foods name, and when Howard Dean retired in 2002, Engles became chairman and CEO of the new empire, including the Silk plant-based beverages Engles purchased shares of in 2001 and Dean wholly owned and began expanding in 2002.

The 2001 Suiza / Dean merger, incidentally, led the Department of Justice (DOJ) to require divestiture of about 10% of the two companies’ combined 100-plus milk plant holdings. The 11 identified plants were purchased by National Dairy Holdings, an investor group led by Dairy Farmers of America (DFA), which had 50% ownership at the time it acquired the Dean-divested plants.

By 2009, DFA had over 87% ownership of National Dairy LLC, which had grown to 18 plants with Borden, Dairy Fresh, Flav-O-Rich, Meyer Dairy, Dairymens, Velda Farms and Coburg Dairy brands, and that year sold to Mexico’s largest processor Grupo Lala.

In 2016, Lala spun off National Dairy as Borden Dairy in its new U.S. division through acquisition of Laguna Dairy. In 2017, the Borden Dairy Company transferred to its major investor and current owner ACON Investments.

Six of the 11 plants from the 2001 Dean / Suiza divestiture (two in Florida, one in Kentucky, one in Ohio, one in South Carolina and one in Alabama) are a core of present-day Borden’s 12 plants. National Dairy is also listed as one of the associated legal entities that together comprise the Borden Dairy Company Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization filed Jan. 5, 2020 in Wilmington, Delaware.

Both Dean Foods and Borden Dairy Company (National Dairy) have been headquartered in Dallas, Texas since 2001-02.

Capitol Peak Partners 30-Year Track Record

Source capitalpeakpartners.com

According to Capitol Peak’s website, where a colorful and complex graphic depicts 30 years of Engles’ experience in dairy industry acquisitions, mergers, capital structure, category expansions and spin offs, Engles not only consolidated the fluid milk industry, but also was instrumental in expanding organic and plant-based brands. These were combined and spun off as standalone WhiteWave in 2012 with Dean retaining a majority interest.

That’s the point in time when Engles left Dean Foods to be chairman and CEO of WhiteWave, which he later sold to Danone for $12.5 billion in 2017 — the year Engles, who sits on the Danone board today, founded Capitol Peak, the entity that has now teamed up with KKR to buy Borden.

At the time of his departure from Dean Foods in 2012, a New York Times article revealed Engles earned as much as $156 million across the post-merger 2002-12 decade with Dean.

Engles’ tenure with Dean Foods also saw the filing of both the Southeast and Northeast class-action Antitrust Lawsuits that alleged anti-competitive behavior between then Dean CEO Engles and then DFA CEO Gary Hanman. Plaintiff dairy farmers alleged the anti-competitive market behavior caused economic losses and structural change that restricted market access as DFA followed a parallel course, building its national cooperative business in a similar regional merge-acquire-streamline fashion as Dean did with milk plants and companies.

According to biographies about Engles, small family-owned dairy companies were attracted to sell to Dean Foods where some could continue to operate with access to capital and technologies. The same has been said by smaller regional milk cooperative members over the years, where a merger with DFA was attractive due to promises of facility upgrades. Not always did those promises come true, and often those markets were swallowed and absorbed.

Both antitrust cases were eventually settled separately by defendants Dean Foods and DFA / DMS. However, a civil case brought in 2016 by farmers who requested exemption from the Northeast “class” is currently headed to jury trial in Vermont vs. defendant DFA / DMS.

The other half of the Borden buying equation — KKR — has a history with the Borden name.

According to Borden’s website and elsewhere, KKR (Kohlberg Krvais Robers), a global investment firm headquartered in New York, had purchased the original Borden Inc. in 1995 for $2 billion and sold off the varied conglomerate in pieces by the time the landmark Suiza / Dean merger occurred in 2001.

Borden as a brand, and Elsie the cow, no longer autonomous, were still popular but faded from the spotlight. DFA began using the brand for cheese, and in 2009, came out with Borden Essentials, including a “Kid-Builders” cheese line. DFA still uses the Borden brand for cheese today.

As noted, the present-day Borden fluid milk and cream business that is being sold in bankruptcy, traces its current business genesis to the April 2001 formation of National Dairy — the group of investors led by DFA to purchase Crowley and Kemps (Marigold), and later that year (November) the 11 plants divested from the Dean / Suiza merger to satisfy the DOJ.

In 2004, HP Hood acquired Kemps and Crowley from National Dairy (with Hood later trading Kemps back to DFA). Other mergers, acquisitions and spin offs as mentioned above eventually left six of the 11 Dean-divested plants among the core of what is now the Borden Dairy Company.

Borden’s current CEO Tony Sarsam, who took the helm in March 2018, was vocal a year ago in a Food Dive article about the company’s renewed direction to refresh Borden’s branding, bring research and marketing to innovation in the fluid milk sector with a commitment to traditional dairy.

Over the past year, Borden come out with new messaging, reintroduced its mascot Elsie to the public with a modern day twist, and launched new products like the “Kid-Builders” line of 2% fat, no sugar added, flavored milks in attractive individual serving chugs for children as well as new whole milk flavors inspired by the Texas State Fair.

In fact, when Borden filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January, the company stated in press releases its intention to come out of the restructure stronger. At one point in the concurrent Dean Foods bankruptcy sale, investors and creditors even looked at ways to have Borden buy Dean. A sale of Borden was not on the radar.

Most in the industry could see the handwriting on the wall for Dean Foods as the large national commodity model had been dealt a stiff blow by Wal-Mart on the one hand, consumers seeking ‘local’ regional brands on the other hand and intrusion by non-dairy alternatives reducing volume to some degree in the background.

But Borden’s bankruptcy filing in January caught many by surprise, as did the sale and auction announcement filed with the court May 5, just four days after the Dean sale was consummated primarily to DFA.

In April, Borden had applied for milk contracts through the USDA Coronavirus Food Assistance Program (CFAP), and on May 12, USDA awarded Borden the lion’s share of the contracts — to the tune of $147 million – to distribute milk through the CFAP Farmers to Families Food Box Program May 15 through June 30.

Even so, on May 22, Borden’s auction procedures were announced. The auction closed June 13, with New Dairy announced June 15 as successful bidder, pending bankruptcy approval.

There are no reports at this juncture of any missed payments to Borden direct dairy producers. Several small claims have been filed on the bankruptcy docket by DFA for Borden milk testing at DFA-owned laboratories, and substantial claims have been filed from milk transport companies, including those like NDH Transport that are now part of the overall Borden Dairy Company bankruptcy restructure.

As for federal order pool payments, USDA AMS indicated this week that they will be filing proofs of claim by the July 3 deadline for monies due the Producer Settlement Funds and other FMMO and Dairy Research and Promotion-related accounts, but the amounts were not disclosed. Substantial claims have been filed for these payments in the separate Dean Foods bankruptcy.

Borden’s 12 milk plants are located in Dothan, Alabama; Decatur, Georgia; Miami and Winter Haven, Florida; London, Kentucky; Lafayette, Louisiana; Hattiesburg, Missouri; Cleveland, Ohio; North Charleston, South Carolina; and Austin, Dallas and Conroe, Texas. They are predominantly fluid milk plants, also making cream, condensed and cultured dairy products.

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Dean pays independents for April milk, owes millions to co-ops, USDA FMMOs, MilkPEP

Posted on June 11, 2020 by Agmoos

The Dean Foods product lineup as pictured on its website just prior to the November 2019 bankruptcy filing and May 2020 sale.

By Sherry Bunting, Farmshine, June 12, 2020

HOUSTON, Tex. — Dairy producers who ship milk independently to any of the former Dean Foods’ 57 milk plants began receiving their final payments for April milk on Monday, June 8. These were the payments due from Dean debtor in possession (DIP) in mid-May that became part of the administrative expenses in the post-sale proceedings of the Southern Foods Group (Dean Foods) bankruptcy in the Southern District Court of Texas.

Several dairy producers in several states confirmed to Farmshine Tuesday that they received these payments. Furthermore, their May advance payments were timely made by the new owners of the former Dean plants — namely DFA and Prairie Farms.

The Pennsylvania Milk Marketing Board (PMMB) staff also confirmed late Tuesday that, “All Pennsylvania independent Dean producers have been paid what was due them for April.”

For its part, the PMMB staff had initially begun the process of auditing non-payments in preparation of filing bond claims. Seven of Dean’s plants are licensed and bonded in Pennsylvania – a requirement to buy milk from farms in the state. This includes four plants in Pennsylvania, one in New Jersey, one in New York and one in Ohio.

The PMMB quickly shifted gears early this week from auditing non-payments to auditing the payments to independent producers, and as conveyed, found that producers received what was due.

The PMMB staff also indicated they are completing their auditing of what is still owed to milk cooperatives. If payments to cooperatives are not received, PMMB will file the necessary bond claims for any Pennsylvania cooperative milk that remains unpaid by the Dean bankruptcy estate.

Nationwide, independent producers have been paid, but cooperatives are still owed for April milk as of June 10.

In addition, USDA AMS Dairy Programs in Washington replied Tuesday, June 9 that, “USDA has not received payment from Dean (DIP) for April producer settlement funds owed.”

USDA had previously indicated that not only were the pool funds outstanding, Dean had also not paid the FMMOs for producer marketing services, transportation credits and administrative service in nine Federal Orders. Dean Foods is fully regulated in all Federal Orders except for the Pacific Northwest and Arizona.

In mid-May, USDA reported that, “handlers were notified via memorandum of the non-payment and the pro-ration of the available producer settlement monies.”

The loss of Dean’s Class I contributions to Federal Order settlement funds from 57 plants regulated in nine Federal Orders would decrease the blend price paid to all producers in those areas — under normal conditions — by reducing the pool funds drawn by handlers for other class uses. Several cooperatives are handling the loss of pool funds from back in Oct./Nov., and potentially April, by way of milk check deductions that will continue until the pool shortfalls are covered.

In an email response this week to Farmshine, USDA AMS Dairy Programs confirmed that, “No claims for these April producer settlement funds have been filed with the bankruptcy court because the April Federal Milk Marketing Order (FMMO) obligations are post-bankruptcy debts and are recouped through the post-bankruptcy process.”

The post-bankruptcy process involves the Dean estate’s plan being filed with the court outlining how it will pay its vendors (including USDA producer settlement funds) as it winds down operations of the estate. According to USDA, Dean has notified the court that it will file the payment plan by August 3.

How much is owed for April milk to the USDA FMMO producer settlement funds across the U.S. is deemed proprietary information, according to USDA, and “it has not yet been aggregated with appropriate redactions and cannot be released at this time.”

However, some milk cooperative sources handling only manufacturing class milk in the Northeast and Mideast are pegging their losses from these unpaid April settlement funds to be upwards of 30% of the blend price.

In addition to the missed payments to FMMO settlement funds for April, USDA confirmed in an email that it filed proofs of claim in the bankruptcy proceeding for monies owed prior to the bankruptcy filing for October and mid-November 2019 milk marketings.

“Those proofs of claim (for Oct./Nov. 2019) totaled $13.8 million for monies owed to producer settlement fund, marketing service, administrative, and transportation credit funds, as well as the Fluid Milk Processor Promotion Program. The proof of claim documents were filed on April 21, 2020 and can be viewed on the Dean Foods Restructuring website,” USDA stated in an email response this week.

With more than 3000 documents on the Southern Foods Group bankruptcy docket, a search of claims did yield more than two dozen separate proof of claim filings by USDA on April 21, including information showing that Dean owes $3.1 million for Oct./Nov. 2019 to the Fluid Milk Processor Education and Promotion Program (MilkPEP). Fluid milk processors are obligated by USDA to pay 20 cents per hundredweight into this fluid milk promotion fund.

It is unclear how much of what was due the cooperatives back in Oct./Nov. 2019 is also upaid, but proofs of claim filed in March 2020 by milk cooperatives peg the largest amounts owed from last fall at $103.4 million to Dairy Farmers of America (DFA); around $14 million to Southeast Milk (SMI); and over $7 million to Land O’Lakes. The link to claims documents on the Southern Foods Group bankruptcy docket can be found at https://dm.epiq11.com/case/dnf/claims

As for what is owed to USDA for April 2020, it is difficult to estimate an amount based on the proof of claims filed for Oct./Nov. 2019 because COVID-19 disruptions completely altered the milk marketing landscape in April.

While Class I sales were much higher in April 2020 compared with October and November 2019, the Class I base price was $5.00 per hundredweight lower in April vs. Oct./Nov. Also, the amount of milk diverted to the lowest class “dumpage and other use” category for April was enormous – at 350 million pounds across all Federal Orders, this was up 960% from a year ago and represented almost 2% of the entire U.S. milk supply in April (see related story in next week’s edition of Farmshine).

These factors would most assuredly reduce the Dean settlement fund obligations to the FMMOs for April 2020 as compared with “normal conditions”. However, the marketing, transportation credits and MilkPEP checkoff obligations were likely higher in April than last fall.

Producers and state and federal sources indicate that the remaining skeleton staff for Dean Foods, post-sale, has been helpful in keeping lines of communication open. Each step of the way, independent producers, producer groups, state boards and others received information about the process and its potential timelines.

In the case of the independent shippers, at least, the Dean estate paid them the first week of June after letters were sent the week prior, indicating potential payment by mid-June.

State and regional organizations, such as Farm Bureaus, milk marketing boards, state departments of agriculture, and others had written letters to the bankruptcy court and the Dean estate, and articles about the unfolding situation had also been provided, leading up to Dean’s communication with producers and ultimately these payments to independent shippers being made.

As well, the bankruptcy court docket, hearing process, and bidding process seem to have been transparent, for the most part, albeit extremely complex.

In spite of this transparency, bidders other than Dairy Farmers of America (DFA) were not privy to details needed about payables for some of the Dean plants – information that was critical to putting together financing for potential bids. Furthermore, the 44-plant lump-bid by DFA provided an edge to win plants that had multiple contending bidders by lumping them together with plants that had no contending bidders.

What remains unclear is how the more than $100 million dollars, Dean owes to DFA will be handled in relation to DFA’s purchase of substantially most of Dean’s plants and assets at a price of $433 million. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) approved the sale, with the stipulation that three plants located in Wisconsin, Illinois and Massachusetts be divested.

The map of Dean Foods plants as provided by Dean Foods after its bankruptcy filing last November juxtaposed with the map of DFA plants — both wholly owned and affiliated — according to locations listed as such or otherwise publicly available.

Through the Chapter 11 bankruptcy sale process, which was consummated the first week of May 2020, 44 of Dean Foods’ 57 milk plants (including all seven licensed to buy milk from Pennsylvania farms) were acquired by DFA, the nation’s largest milk cooperative, headquartered in Kansas City, Kansas accounting for one-third of the U.S. raw milk supply with members nationwide and sales nationally and internationally. DFA was Dean’s largest milk supplier and the Dean accounts represented DFA’s largest milk buyer, according to court documents.

Eight Dean plants and other assets were acquired by Prairie Farms, a milk cooperative headquartered in Edwardsville, Illinois with members as far south and east as Kentucky to as far north and west as Minnesota, marketing products in at least 14 states. Several years ago, DFA and Prairie Farms jointly purchased and incorporated the previously family-owned Hiland Dairy Foods, headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri, with its 17 fluid milk and dairy plants and 51 distribution centers that together stretch through the Heartland from Texas to South Dakota.

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USDA communicates with DOJ as Dean ‘Estate’ misses final payments on April milk; lawsuit filed to block sale to DFA

Posted on May 22, 2020 by Agmoos

By Sherry Bunting, Farmshine, May 22, 2020

HOUSTON, Tex. — Dean is a dead duck, with an estate. The ‘pools’ (no pun intended), in which it reigned as top duck — and most of the pool toys it gathered over the past 20 years — have been sold to its largest supplier, Dairy Farmers of America (DFA), leaving just the Dean Foods (Southern Foods Group) Estate to settle its affairs, including paying farmers for April milk sold in good faith.

But the funds to do that are locked into the Chapter 11 plan handling all manner of administrative expense claims that could take days, weeks or months to sort out. Part of the issue is that the super-priority credit facility of $850 million was extended to Dean to keep operating before sale. Now the sale is consummated, and that credit facility is not being used for critical vendors. In fact, what was used of the $850 million becomes the first post-petition debt to settle.

Meanwhile, dairy farmers are looking at their contracts and the regulated pricing structures and even those states with bonding and wondering what recourse they have for payment. Most have no recourse. In states like Pennsylvania, there is bonding of licensed milk buyers through the Pennsylvania Milk Marketing Board, and it is a complex process.

On a recent DMI ‘open mic’ call for producers, Jim Mulhern of National Milk Producers Federation was a guest. He said they have looked into whether the Packers and Stockyards Act guaranteeing prompt payment for livestock could be use. It can’t, he said. There is no national insurance-bonding of milk buyers like there is for meat and poultry.

Not only did Dean milk suppliers not receive payment, cooperative handlers also went without payment, and the Federal Order pools in which Dean Foods is regulated did not receive their settlement payments. This then affects payments to handlers from the pool for April milk, which in turn affects other dairy producers paid by those other handlers.

Dean Foods did pay the April advance – the first of two monthly checks paid to dairy farmers. But the settlement funds for April milk due mid-May have not been paid, and Federal Milk Marketing Orders have established dates in each milk marketing area of the country stating when the settlement payments are made to the pool, when the handlers are paid from the pool and when the producers are paid by the handlers.

All of those dates for all Federal Milk Marketing Orders have now passed as of May 19, and Dean Foods’ Estate has not honored any of these April milk settlement obligations.

According to USDA Dairy Programs, “Dean Foods, DIP, (Dean) is fully regulated in all Federal milk marketing orders except the Pacific Northwest and Arizona. Dean did not make payment into the Producer Settlement Fund (PSF) for April pooled milk to any FMMO where it is fully regulated.”

USDA also confirms that, “Dean is responsible for paying the blend price to the independent producers who supply its plants. That payment is not contingent on whether or not Dean pays into the Producer Settlement Fund.”

Dairy farmers that ship to Dean Foods confirm no payment has been received, and the Pa. Milk Marketing Board confirms being notified of the same as it regulates these payments in Pennsylvania as well.

USDA indicates that it is “closely monitoring the situation and is keenly aware of the impact this failure to pay has on the dairy industry.”

Furthermore, USDA is continuing to consult with the Department of Justice in an effort to work within the confines of the bankruptcy laws to recoup monies owed to the Pool Settlement Funds.

Handlers were notified by USDA via memorandum (see Order 5 example of what went out to all FMMO handlers above). They were notified of the non-payment and the pro-ration of available producer settlement monies.

Some handlers have indicated this affects their funds to pay their producers by 20 to 30% for April milk.

In Pennsylvania, where there is bonding through the Pa. Milk Marketing Board, every bond claim is unique and fact-dependent, so there’s no set time that has to pass before a claim is made.

Activity reports are not due to the Pa. Milk Marketing Board until May 25, so a bond claim cannot be made for Pennsylvania milk until the PMMB knows how much is owed.

On the national side, USDA confirms that Dean did timely file its milk receipts and utilization report for April, but these figures are confidential and proprietary, so the amounts owed to farmers and the Producer Settlement Fund are not known.

While USDA is communicating with the U.S. Department of Justice on this, the PMMB is reportedly doing their best to communicate and work with Dean to determine if there’s anything it can do — short of the agency filing a bond claim to have Pennsylvania producers paid. There are four Dean plants in Pennsylvania and at least two out-of-state plants, including one in New Jersey, receiving milk from Pennsylvania and surrounding states.

For Dean’s part, Gary Rahlfs is the chief financial officer overseeing the “winding down” of the Dean Foods Estate. In an email reply early this week, he referred to the May 6 public announcement at the Dean restructuring website after the sale of plants and other assets was completed that week, stating: “Dean Foods anticipates that the plan will provide for the full payment of all administrative expense claims in several months (following the repayment of its senior secured super-priority post-petition financing facility) as proceeds continue to come into the Dean Foods Estate.”

In addition to the public announcement, Rahlfs confirmed that administrative expense claims do include the payments Dean owes for April milk and many other payables.

“We are working diligently to ensure this process and the payments are made as quickly as possible,” Rahlfs wrote in an email response to Farmshine.

Unfortunately, it appears from the wording of the announcement that this could take several months, and the super-priority credit facility Dean used to continue operations during the bankruptcy sale process is being prioritized for repayment as income comes in from sale of assets and prior sales of product during this “winding down” plan for the bankruptcy.

All through the bankruptcy and sale proceedings in the Southern District of Texas, Judge David Jones referred often to how it was a priority of his to ensure a sale process that would not leave schoolchildren without milk and would not leave farmers without markets or employees without jobs. He talked often of fond memories as a child of milk delivered by the milkman.

In fact, this is one reason, Judge Jones approved retainment bonuses for professional staff to be sure that the people who understand the milk business would continue in their positions so the company and its 57 plants would remain in operation and viable during the bankruptcy sale to avoid the chaos that would result if the company fell into Chapter 7 status.

However, a detail left hanging is the final payment to farmers and cooperatives supplying milk to Dean Foods.

Back in November, when Dean Foods filed under Chapter 11, farmers had many questions about whether or not they would continue to be paid for milk. Credit facility of $850 million was secured, and the court gave permission to use income and credit facility for day to day operations to pay employees and critical vendors, including farmers.

In fact, a Raw Milk Supplier FAQ dated November 2019 still searchable in a cache file of the Dean restructuring website stated (as shown above) states: “We intend to pay suppliers in full under normal terms for goods and services provided after the filing date (Nov. 12).”

That language is no longer readily shown on the website. It was replaced when DFA became heir-apparent by a completely new and different Raw Milk Supplier FAQ dated February 2020.

While DFA, the buyer of 44 of the 57 Dean plants at a price of $433 million, has been Dean Foods’ largest milk supplier, the company also has many independent family farm shippers throughout the Northeast, Southeast and across the country. All are left waiting for payment at a time when they’ve already come through five years of low income and below-break-even prices and at a time when they are taking further losses in milk pricing and additional marketing costs due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a separate action this week, a lawsuit was filed for an injunction against the sale of 44 of Dean’s 57 plants to DFA. The lawsuit was filed by Food Lion and Maryland Virginia Milk Producers Cooperative in Federal District Court for Middle North Carolina in Greensboro Tuesday, May 19.

The lawsuit states that DFA’s ownership of Dean’s milk plants is the “coup de grâce (final blow) for competition” in fluid milk markets, arguing the merger gives DFA monopoly over the dairy supply chain, the death of the independent, family-owned dairy farms, and higher prices ultimately for consumers.

Plaintiffs are specifically asking the Court to grant a preliminary injunction to block the sale and want DFA to divest at least one of the Dean facilities in the Carolinas to an unaffiliated independent purchaser.

“This action arises out of Defendant Dairy Farmers of America, Inc.’s (“DFA”) longstanding effort to seize control of the milk supply chain. Indeed, for the past two decades, DFA has rapidly consolidated and dominated the market for the supply of raw milk not by competing on the merits, but through unlawful conduct and anti-competitive agreements through which it has gained near-complete control over the purchasing of key nationwide milk processors,” the plaintiffs state in their filing.

“This anti-competitive campaign has allowed DFA to transform itself from a modest regional dairy cooperative into the Standard Oil of the modern dairy industry.”

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) already approved the deal three weeks ago with the stipulation that three plants in Wisconsin, Illinois and Massachusetts be divested from the 44-plant DFA purchase.

Prior to the bankruptcy and sale, Dean Foods was DFA’s largest customer and DFA was Dean Food’s largest milk-supplier.

“Their partnership was forged through a corrupt bargain entered into at the time of a prior merger between Dean and another dairy processing giant, in order to avoid U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) scrutiny through subterfuge and deception,” the plaintiffs state.

“On May 1, 2020, DFA and Dean closed on the Asset Sale, transforming DFA overnight into both the largest milk producer and the largest milk processor in the United States,” plaintiffs continue. “With capability to wield market power at two levels of the supply chain, DFA now has both the ability and the incentive to wipe out any remaining pockets of competition.”

-30-

More open bidding process, accelerated timetable underway for sale of Dean Foods plants

Posted on March 30, 2020 by Agmoos

By Sherry Bunting, Farmshine, Friday, March 27, 2020

HOUSTON, Texas – Changes have officially been made to the bidding procedures originally sought by Dean Foods in the conglomerate’s Southern Foods Group Chapter 11 bankruptcy and sale in the Southern District of Texas.

In a very brief continuation of bidding procedures hearing on March 19, U.S. Judge David R. Jones said he would sign an order that outlined the new procedures and accelerated timetable for bankruptcy and sale proceedings. A cover story in last week’s Farmshine described the concerns and changes that led to the new order.

On the evening before the hearing, Dean withdrew its original proposal for Dairy Farmers of America (DFA) to be designated as stalking horse bidder, essentially dissolving key elements of the Feb. 17 Asset Purchase Agreement with DFA on 44 of Dean’s 57 plants.

This move to a “value maximizing” sale process opens the bidding to more opportunities for additional single- and multi-plant bids as well as a potential restructuring bid.

Bids are due by Noon CDT on March 30, 2020, with Dean declaring winners shortly thereafter.

Objections to a sale order or transaction are to be filed in writing by April 1, 2020 at Noon CDT.

A hearing to consider the proposed sale transaction will be held before Judge Jones on April 3, 2020 at 9:00 a.m. CDT.

Attorneys and consultants for interested parties worked together at the suggestion of Judge Jones to modify the original proposal after objections were raised by the creditors committee, potential buyers of Dean assets, and more than a half dozen dairy cooperatives. Their concerns focused on the lack of fairness and transparency in the previously proposed bidding process that sought to designate DFA as lead bidder with protections for its 44-plant bid.

The order at the case docket does not remove DFA as a potential bidder but opens the process by not designating DFA as the stalking horse bidder.

More information can be found at the website for the Southern Foods Group case at https://dm.epiq11.com/case/southernfoods/dockets and at https://deanfoodsrestructuring.com/

-30-

Co-ops seek bid process modifications, object to ‘stalking horse’ status in DFA bid for 44 Dean plants

Posted on March 12, 2020 by Agmoos

6 co-ops covering 3000 farms and 10% of milk cite bid barriers, antitrust concerns, detrimental impacts

By Sherry Bunting, Farmshine, Friday, March 13, 2020

HOUSTON, Texas – New ripples emerged this week in the Dean Foods Company (Southern Foods Group LLC) Chapter 11 sale proceedings in the bankruptcy court of the southern district of Texas.

Just three days before the March 12 hearing on Dean’s motion to approve DFA as “stalking horse bidder,” an ad hoc committee for dairy cooperatives filed a limited objection on Monday, March 9 regarding the Feb. 17th DFA-Dean asset purchase agreement that covers a majority of Dean’s assets.

If Judge David Jones grants stalking horse status to DFA’s $425 million bid for 44 of the 57 plants and other itemized assets and liabilities, this would become part of the bidding procedures, which the March 12 hearing is expected to further outline, and it would provide certain protections to DFA’s initial bid.

“A potential sale of assets to Dairy Farmers of America Inc. (DFA), if approved, would effectively consolidate DFA’s grip on the national milk market. The ripple effects of the sale will detrimentally impact all of DFA’s competitors, from the largest dairy cooperatives and milk producers, to the smallest farmers,” the objection stated.

“For exactly this reason, the ad hoc committee, which includes certain creditors of (Dean) and competitors of DFA, was formed to… monitor the Chapter 11 cases, examine the impact that a sale to DFA would have on their businesses, and to the greatest extent possible, ensure that some semblance of fairness remains in the competitive process for the benefit of all dairy cooperatives,” the objection stated.

The ad hoc committee represents what is described as a broad cross-section of U.S. farm milk, covering over 3000-member dairy farms producing nearly 10% of the nation’s milk.
Six cooperatives are listed in the objection, and they have a mix of circumstances — one is a creditor of the debtor (Dean Foods) some are non-creditors except for non-pool payments that are owed, some are current suppliers of Dean Foods, and some are competitors in retail milk distribution.

According to the objection on the case docket, the six co-ops are:

• Lone Star Milk Producers, Inc., based in Wichita Falls, Texas with 120 member farms in eight states, marketing 1.9 billion pounds of milk annually;

• Agri-Mark Inc.,with 850 member farms in New England and New York marketing 3.3 billion pounds of milk annually;

• Cayuga Marketing, LLC, based in Auburn, New York with 30 member farms producing 1.3 billion pounds of milk annually;

• Cobblestone Milk Cooperative, Inc., Chatham, Virginia with 19 member farms from Virginia to Georgia marketing 0.6 billion pounds of milk annually;

• Maryland and Virginia Milk Producers Cooperative Association Inc., with 930 member farms in multiple states of the Midatlantic and Southeast producing 2.5 billion pounds of milk annually; and

• Michigan Milk Producers Association with 1300 member farms in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Wisconsin producing over 5 billion pounds of milk annually.
The limited objection seeks to address “certain fundamental flaws in the bidding procedures,” which “exacerbate the antitrust issues that plague the debtors’ proposed sale to DFA.”

• In a separate action, Southeast Milk, a Florida-based dairy cooperative also filed a similar objection this week.

At the start of the Chapter 11 cases that were all lumped together under Southern Foods Group LLC, the debtors, Dean Foods, proclaimed intentions of expanding the sale and marketing process and of exploring restructuring alternatives. Instead, the objection asserts that Dean Foods “spent months negotiating and finalizing proposed bidding procedures with DFA that only serve to create unnecessary competitive issues.”

Cited barriers to competing bids included the multi-step qualification process and compressed time frame that make it difficult for others to bid, including the use of terms that are not defined.

“Perhaps by design, these procedures make it a foregone conclusion that DFA will be the successful bidder for all stalking horse assets, even assuming that an auction were to occur,” the objection states.

On these and other grounds, the ad hoc committee for dairy cooperatives filed the limited objection and submitted that, “The proposed bidding procedures are not reasonably designed to secure the highest and best bid for the sale of the bid assets.”

While the debtors assert their proposed bidding procedures were designed to facilitate a flexible, robust and competitive bidding process, the objection asserts that, “The debtors have closely held all sale-related information and other information that they consider to be potentially confidential.”

In addition, objections are raised about the bidding procedures being “strategically crafted to prevent any of the stalking horse assets (44 plants) from being siphoned off by DFA’s competitors and broken down into auction lots that could yield a greater aggregate sale price for the debtors’ estates.”

The breadth of the DFA-Dean asset purchase agreement is a barrier if approved as ‘stalking horse’ assets because few, if any, bidders could compete on those assets collectively — keeping potential regional buyers that could be affected by the outcome from actually bidding.

Several modifications are requested, including how qualifications are set, how much discretion is given to Dean on separating auction lots, extension of the time frame, and a dual track auction process that would provide for back-up successful bidders and back-up alternate bidders for auction lots as separate sale transactions in the event that the DOJ does not provide the necessary regulatory approval for the sale to DFA.

Stay tuned.

DFA-Dean reach initial $425 mil. bid agreement, starting point in court-supervised sale

Posted on February 20, 2020 by Agmoos

By Sherry Bunting, Farmshine, Friday, February 21, 2020

HOUSTON, Tex. — Dean Foods Company announced Monday, Feb. 17 that it has reached an initial agreement with Dairy Farmers of America (DFA) regarding sale of a substantial portion of Dean’s assets. The two parties have entered into an asset purchase agreement that was filed in the Southern Food Group bankruptcy case with the Court for the Southern District of Texas in Houston this week, along with other motions.

This is just a first-step in a legal process that will unfold over the next several months and begins with Dean’s motion seeking court approval of DFA as the “stalking horse bidder” with an initial bid of $425 million at a hearing set for March 12.

A “stalking horse bidder” is the low-bid that can be accepted by the debtor in a court-supervised sale, and with certain bid protections for that bidder if other bids are offered.

The agreement includes 44 of Dean’s 57 currently operating plants and other of Dean’s assets as well as certain liabilities related to these assets. But, as learned in an email interview with a Dean Foods spokesperson and a review of court documents, this is not an all-inclusive price for the 44 locations as certain real property connected to these assets is named as for additional purchase.

Furthermore, 14 of Dean’s operating plants and 13 closed plants and/or distribution depots are listed as excluded from the DFA-Dean agreement.

This agreement still requires the approval of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas.

Anne Divjak, Dean Foods vice president for government relations and external communications, indicates that the company is cooperating with DOJ’s probe of antitrust concerns by providing requested information and answering questions.

Timeline and competing bids

A timeline for court hearings has been set beginning with the March 12 hearing to approve DFA as “stalking horse bidder.”

Interested parties with competing bids for the assets included in the DFA-Dean agreement as well as bidders for assets excluded from that agreement have until March 31 to provide the court with information in order to be considered as qualified potential bidders.

Those qualified bidders will then have until April 13 to submit bids.

A court-supervised auction would then be conducted sometime in April with an approval hearing set for April 27.

Negotiations continue

Divjak confirmed that Dean is speaking with other parties interested in acquiring assets – including some that are interested in assets excluded from the DFA-Dean agreement. Court documents also confirm that Dean is speaking with advisors and creditor committees about other restructuring options, though no details are provided.

Court documents reveal further that Dean Foods and investment banker Evercore Group, hired in February 2019 to evaluate potential strategies for the future, began negotiations with DFA in October 2019 — believing DFA to be the entity “likely to contribute significant value to the debtor’s businesses,” but they failed to reach agreement prior to the bankruptcy petition date of November 12.

After November 12, Evercore began communicating with additional potential strategic and financial buyers while continuing to engage with DFA, according to court documents.

These documents described the past three months in which Evercore received incoming interest from nearly 100 entities, including 55 potential strategic buyers (18 of them regional dairy companies) and 44 potential financial buyers. Of that number, 38 parties were provided with confidential information regarding Dean’s business. Several of those, including DFA, expressed interest in considering a transaction with Deans and were granted access to a data room containing additional confidential information on the bid assets.

Court documents also show Dean’s explanation that it continued to follow a “competitive process and arm’s length negotiations… to secure a bid from DFA,” which now pertains to the motion filed with the court on Monday seeking approval of DFA as the “stalking horse bidder.”

According to a Dean press release at the Dean Foods restructuring website (https://deanfoodsrestructuring.com/), president and CEO Eric Beringause states that, “We have had a relationship with DFA over the past 20 years, and we are confident in their ability to succeed in the current market and serve our customers with the same commitment to quality and service they have come to expect.”

At a Northeast Dairy Leadership meeting in Syracuse, New York right after the Dean bankruptcy filing in November, DFA CEO Rick Smith was quoted in a Berry on Dairy blog post to say: “Everybody’s been telling me for years that we are the logical owner of Dean’s. And I’ve already gotten phone calls about people who want to partner with us. We will be interested in some assets, undoubtedly. And not interested in some, undoubtedly. Some (assets) should be closed. Some will require partners.”

Of the assets excluded from the DFA-Dean agreement, half are currently operating plants and half are plants that are closed. Of the 13 closed plants Dean is looking to sell, eight were closed 15 to 20 years ago, several of them in 2001; and five were closed more recently in 2018 when over 130 dairy producers in eight states lost their Dean contracts after Walmart’s first milk bottling plant opened.

What’s included in the DFA-Dean agreement?

Included in the DFA-Dean agreement are all four currently-operating Dean plants in Pennsylvania – Lansdale, Lebanon, Schuylkill Haven and Sharpsville — along with the Florence, New Jersey plant.

Also included are one plant in New York, two in Massachusetts, two in North Carolina, one in South Carolina, two in Florida, two locations (three plants) in Tennessee, five in Texas, two in Ohio, two in Michigan, two in Indiana, three in Illinois, one in Iowa, one in Wisconsin, one in Idaho, two in Utah, one in Nevada, one in New Mexico, two in Montana, two in Colorado, one in California. The Barber Pure plant in Birmingham, Alabama is split with only the ice cream business being included in the Dean-DFA agreement while the fluid milk business has been excluded.

Brand assets that are part of the agreement include DairyPure, TruMoo and Steve’s Ice Cream.

Subsidiaries in Mexico are also mentioned in the agreement. Furthermore, Dean holds an ownership interest with Organic Valley in Organic Valley Fresh, and this distribution joint-venture is included in the DFA-Dean agreement.

Dean’s motions filed this week also seek certain “relief” items in the final auction process, including provisions that DFA would assume certain contracts and leases referred to as “proposed assumed contracts” that are connected to the sale transaction.

How this affects Dean Dairy Direct milk suppliers is unclear in terms of protection under the transfer of these milk supply contracts under the sale of related assets.

On Wednesday (Feb. 19), a hearing was conducted to handle a motion filed by a dairy farmer in Tennessee to end his milk supply contract with Dean to pursue a new contract with another milk buyer out of concern about potentially losing his Dean contract after the sale of assets is approved. Under bankruptcy court-supervised sale and reorganization, critical vendor contracts cannot be terminated or changed by either the debtor (Dean Foods) or the vendor (dairy producer) without court-approval. The outcome of the hearing was not yet available.

What’s excluded from the DFA-Dean agreement?

Among the 13 closed plants that are excluded from the DFA-Dean agreement are the recent closures of Meadow Gold in Erie, Pennsylvania, a Garelick plant in Lynn, Mass., and the Dean plants in Braselton, Georgia, Louisville, Kentucky, Florence, South Carolina and Livonia, Michigan.

They are all for sale, according to Divjak, who indicated Dean was “actively looking for buyers for these facilities before the asset purchase agreement was announced.”

Among the 14 operating plants that are excluded from the DFA-Dean agreement are notably the Land O’Lakes plants in Sioux Falls, South Dakota and Bismark, North Dakota, and several other Minnesota plant locations.

According to Divjak, the Land O’Lakes brand is not part of the DFA-Dean agreement. Dean has a long-term licensing contract with Land O’Lakes cooperative to use the brand name and Indian Maiden logo for fluid milk and soft products sold from Dean plants. That licensing agreement, which Divjak said could be negotiated by potential buyers, also applies to other Dean plants as whipping cream, half-and-half and other products sold under the Land O’Lakes brand name are found at supermarkets nationwide, while the Land O’Lakes line of whole milk, 2% reduced-fat, 1% low-fat and fat-free milk is a well-known brand with a following in the western Minnesota, South Dakota and greater Central Plains region.

Dean Foods’ minority interest in Good Karma, a flaxseed alternative non-dairy beverage, is not part of the agreement and is separate from the bankruptcy proceeding.

Before the November 12 Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition, Dean Foods had secured special financing of $850 million to underpin its position as debtor-in-possession as well as gaining court approval to use operational cash flow to continue operations and payments to critical vendors during bankruptcy and sale. The special financing was previously expected to keep operations going for about nine months — through July or August.

——————————————————————————————-

ADDENDUM PUBLISHED IN MARKET MOOS COLUMN:

Revealing details in Dean deal

A conference hearing Wed., Feb. 19 in the Dean Foods bankruptcy and court-supervised sale case in Houston, Texas, available by teleconference, revealed many details as motions were heard. Attorneys representing the creditors committee, lenders committee, bondholders committees, Dean Foods, DFA, and a growing list of interested parties covered some sale transition concerns and concerns of creditors about the the low bid of $425 million by DFA that Dean is asking Judge David Jones to approve as a “stalking horse bid” at a hearing set for March 12.

Attorneys argued that the flow of necessary proprietary information from Dean Foods to other parties interested in offering bids has been stalled and delayed to the point where other interested parties were learning about what plants are included and excluded in the DFA-Dean agreement for the first time on Monday — the same day as the rest of the world found out via press release from Dean Foods.

For example, the adhoc bondholders committee is still waiting on a critical piece of information related to milk payables. In that regard, an attorney representing the creditors committee revealed that DFA — as a large creditor of Dean Foods with significant payables — could have a $1 for $1 deduction in its bid offer to secure its claims that other creditors do not share because DFA is also a critical vendor.

Judge Jones had earlier commented that the business model of the company “worked great in the 1960s but not 2020.” As a self-proclaimed “numbers guy,” the judge said he has looked at the numbers and done the math, and his assessment was hinted at when he commented that there is a sense of urgency to get this deal done so that the bankruptcy proceedings do not fall on the backs of vendors, including farmers and communities.

He said he did not want to be responsible for schoolchildren not getting their milk if the process is protracted for too long and the company fails.

He also stated that, “If integration fixes the problem, we ought to be working on integration.”

Toward that end he asked the entities to work together to see to it that the information needed flows to where it needs to go, but responsibly, and that he will give hearings and listen to all qualified interests, but that he did not want motions and proposals that simply waste the court’s time.

Also, a dairy farmer seeking permission to end his milk supply contract with Dean in February was granted permission as he asserted concerns about ultimately losing the contract after the company is sold and had another option for his milk.

Ag Moos

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DFA-Dean reach initial $425 mil. bid agreement, starting point in court-supervised sale

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