Saskatchewan’s largest hog production company has been granted an extension of its creditor protection until February, and now has until Friday (Dec. 18) to file its restructuring plan for its creditors.
Justice Neil Gabrielson of Court of Queen’s Bench in Saskatoon granted the extensions to Humboldt-based Big Sky Farms last week. The court-ordered stay of proceedings against Big Sky will now run until just before midnight CST on Feb. 1.
Big Sky, one of Canada’s three biggest hog producers, has already reached an agreement in principle on its “plan of arrangement” with several major banks, Farm Credit Canada, company founder-turned-creditor Florian Possberg, provincial investment agency CIC Asset Management and others.
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But Big Sky said it needs this extension to “finalize the drafting” of its plan for presentation to its creditors, at meetings it proposes to hold in February.
The final text of the plan is “anticipated to be a complex commercial document comprising several dozen pages and will require a great deal of careful drafting, attention to detail and additional dialogue (with creditors) before it will be in a position to be filed with the court,” the company’s chief financial officer said in an affidavit attached to its notice of motion to Gabrielson.
Big Sky’s total secured and unsecured debt now sits at $95.93 million, according to the list of creditors the company filed in November.
Secured creditors are owed $81.22 million, including $71.18 million on the company’s senior credit facility. Unsecured creditors, including feed brokers and major grain companies, are owed $14.71 million.
