Postville, IA – No other bidders stepped forward today to challenge a Canadian businessman’s bid to buy the Agriprocessors meatpacking plant in Postville.
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The troubled plant was the subject of an auction in bankruptcy court this afternoon.
No one made a higher offer than the bid announced last month by Hershey Friedman and his partners.
Friedman, who lives in Montreal, leads a group known as SHF Industries LLC. He has agreed to pay about $8.5 million to major creditors of Agriprocessors, mainly First Bank. Smaller creditors, including numerous Postville-area businesses, would get nothing from the deal.
Agriprocessors used to be the nation’s largest supplier of kosher meat, and it was the Postville area’s dominant employer. But it tumbled into bankruptcy after a May 2008 raid by federal immigration authorities.
Several of its former leaders face federal and state criminal charges, including that they defrauded the bank and used illegal immigrants and minors as workers. Several mid-level managers have pleaded guilty.
Trials for the top managers are scheduled to begin in the fall.
The plant has maintained limited chicken production while bankruptcy proceedings continued, but it has not resumed more complicated beef processing. Many Postville residents worried that the plant would close, which would devastate the area’s economy. But state economic development officials have said Friedman intends to revive the business.
It would be proper and fitting for such a benevolent philanthropist to remunerate the very person who brought this particular deal to him.I wish him much hatzlacha once he concludes this business in a way that is both honorable to him and to Hashem.
Good luck Mr. Freidman
To # 2. I hope said broker made prior arrangments with the buyer and then followed up by getting said deal in writing.
To # 4 waht a shame to say u hope naver to hear the name rubashkin again
we should not forget that Rubashkins brought kosher meat to places that did not have it available before.
Mr Friedman means well and wants to help yidden by HOPEFULLY getting the prices of meat to go down by having more competition. (probably will never happen)
Why would Mr Friedman go back to a city which is totally anti semitic and tuened on Rubashkin? Rubashkin was no Mr Tzadik if what he is accused of is indeed true but the bottom line is his workers turned on him when he was in crisis mode and now Mr. Friedman will hire the same bumbs?
OPen up a factory in NJ where people are desperate for jobs.
Good luck.
Please, someone correct me if I am wrong. Is Friedman getting the Rubashkin plant for 8.5 million? If he is, boy is this ever a give away….Seems that the government wants to stick it to Rubashkin even if it means leaving debtors high and dry. If this is true, this is the witchhunt Rubashkin claimed it was. I cannot help but feel terribly sorry for those people…
How much did Mishpacha Magazine get for that cover page?
Given the current economic climate one must wonder why Mr Friedman had to pick the Rubashkins’ tzoros as his latest investment? Certainly there are other oppurtunities of equal value available, that are untainted by Jewish tragedy.
He should have bit 5 Million and saved 3 million if no one was bidding. (my fee for the advice 1%) Is it too late to withdraw the bid?
Did you read that great piece i Mishpacha? Loved it.
My heart goes out to the Rubashkin family. It seems so unfair to me that people who devoted their entire lives to chessed, without any limitations, are having their entire life’s work pulled away from them. I am sure Mr. Friedman is a wonderful person, but it seems unfair that he is benefiting from another’s misfortune. Call me naive.
Well, you know if they didn’ hire illegals exploiting them for poverty wages, aiding and abetting “illegals” to stay here illegaly………and then there is that horrible video tape made by an informant of torturing animals as opposed to humanely killing them, the FBI wouldn’t have come down on them like a ton of bricks. Obviously none of you know the real story of why that place was raided. I cringe when I read of Jews committing such disgusting crimes. Oh, but, hell with that, we just go to how our kosher meat right?
the advisors to this fantastic deal were not Goldman Sachs nor Lazard Freres. But rather the great gaon and mekubol in Nahariya.