Defunct Creamery Assets To Go Up For Auction

Thousands of dollars of the shuttered Matanuska Creamery’s milk processing equipment on the block

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By Matthew F. Smith

Story Created: Feb 27, 2013 at 8:17 PM AKDT

Story Updated: Feb 27, 2013 at 8:19 PM AKDT

ANCHORAGE - In what may very well be the final act of the Matanuska Creamery, the assets of the now-shuttered Mat-Su Valley dairy processor will be sold at auction in mid-March.

The creamery, which closed in December, will have its remaining “equipment, fixtures, inventory, rolling stock and other personal property” auctioned off by the Agricultural Revolving Loan Fund (ARLF). The milk processing equipment includes several thousand-gallon stainless steel tanks, a 6,000 gallon raw milk tank, processing equipment like a homogenizer and a pasteurizer, and cheese making equipment.

The state-run agency owns the nearly $900,000 in debt left over from the creamery. That's from a pair of 2008 loans, as well as an equipment loan that ARLF absorbed when the creamery closed. In a public notice of the auction, Andrea Swanson with ARLF said that, despite efforts to pay off the loan, the interest accrued on the loans is keeping the total debt around $900,000.

Swanson said everything is up for grabs, including “quite a few stainless steel tanks that people have come by and are interested in. We're selling everything, or as much as we can, all the fixtures and everything are going.”

She added that an auction is not the way the agricultural loan group wanted to see it end.

“I think everyone here at the division was sad to see the dairy go, it's been a pretty big staple and I would say the general feeling is a disappointment that they weren't able to make it last.”

Swanson said ARLF hopes to recoup between $400,000 to $500,000 from the auction. But they anticipate costs of around $100,000—including rent paid to the creamery’s former landlord—just to stage it.

For more information on the auction, you can visit the auction’s website.
 

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