A cooperative of farmers and processors seeking to replace the state-owned Matanuska Maid Dairy with its own processing plant came away nearly ready for business from Sunday’s special meeting of the state Board of Agriculture and Conservation (BAC) and the Creamery Board.
BAC Chair Kristan Cole said in meetings with Mat Maid management it became clear an early December cutoff for buying Valley milk products was not going to work. The dairy prefers to pick up local milk through mid-December “rather than order additional milk from Outside.” That buys a few more days for the co-op to get its bottling plant working so farmers may not have to dump any milk products when transitioning from Mat Maid to the new venture.
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Beus said the Creamery Board also agreed to lease to the cooperative some equipment Mat Maid won’t need as it produces its last gallons of milk.
The co-op hopes to get off the ground by the middle of December. All its members have to do to keep to their timeline is build a production plant — in about a month — and then adhere to strict state and federal production rules.
“A lot of the equipment is here,” Beus said. “A lot of it is on its way. We’re excited about moving forward. This thing is going to happen.”
The third part of Beus’ request was the use of the familiar Mat Maid name and logo.
A motion was passed to allow use of the Mat Maid name and logo by the cooperative. Cole did not know what fee would be associated with the logo’s use, adding it was always intended that the logo be used to further Alaska agriculture.
Beus said the co-op offered to lease the Mat Maid brand name for $100 a month and was told a lease of some kind would be negotiated as long as the new cooperative’s products are all produced in Alaska.
While those decisions came as a boon to the new cooperative, they didn’t set well with a prominent state senator.
On Monday, state Senate President Lyda Green, R-Wasilla, raised objections to the separation of the processing equipment and logo from the dairy’s salable assets. Green is also the force behind an audit of Mat Maid’s assets.
Green said she is uncomfortable with the state boards separating out assets, such as the Mat Maid name and logo and pieces of processing equipment, without any kind of competitive bidding process. While the creamery board is private, Green said the agriculture board is a state body and its members are held to higher standards than private firms.
“It’s representative of what we expect from state government,” she said.
Green also disagrees with the boards’ plan to close the book on the dairy.
The Creamery Corp. Board voted Sunday to send 60 percent of the revenue when Mat Maid’s buildings and other assets are liquidated to the state’s Agriculture Revolving Loan Fund and keep the balance to pay creditors.
That loan fund has sent more than $6.4 million to Mat Maid since the 1980s to bail out the ailing dairy, Cole said. The loan fund also gets whatever is left over after creditors are paid.
Green wants Matanuska Maid Dairy’s debt to the state revolving loan fund paid off by the BAC and the Creamery Board, which consist of the same members.
This past summer’s $600,000 bailout came from state general funds, not the loan fund that previously supported the dairy through troubled times.
“I have been disappointed that the boards have been calling the $600,000 ‘transition money’ and that the intent of the use of the funds may be offered as grants to a select few dairymen,” Green says in a prepared statement. “This is clearly not the intended use at the time the Legislature approved the funds.”
Green said Monday she wants “clarifications on how the $600,000 will be used.”
Green said she hopes within three weeks to see preliminary results from a state audit she called for on the dairy’s financial troubles and events surrounding its sale and the valuation of its assets.
The Sunday morning meeting was full of technical votes for the purpose of shutting down a creamery the state hopes to sell by late December. A committee was created to evaluate all bids for the dairy and certify those that follow the state’s bidding standards, Cole said. Qualifying bids will be opened Dec. 7. Cole wouldn’t say how many bidders there are so far.
“We’re going to keep that information confidential until the actual bid opening,” she said.
Contact John R. Moses at john.moses@frontiersman.com or call 352-2270.
Comments
2 comment(s)Anne wrote on Nov 14, 2007 11:02 AM:
Regina Hunter wrote on Nov 14, 2007 9:30 AM: