A major shareholder in beleaguered pea and canola protein processor Merit Functional Foods has brought on an unnamed partner in its bid to buy the business out of receivership.
After announcing last month it would submit a bid for the next-to-new Merit assets, Vancouver-based plant protein firm Burcon NutraScience said Monday it’s now “participating in a bid” for Merit in co-operation with “an industry plant protein company.”
Burcon didn’t identify the other party in its release Monday. It did say that if their joint bid is successful, the two parties “intend to restart the facility and together, strive to reach profitability.”
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Burcon CEO Kip Underwood said it “firmly believe(s) that Burcon’s technologies and process expertise are fundamental to the Merit facility’s future profitability.”
Having just opened for business in early 2021, with major shareholders also including U.S. agrifood firm Bunge and former executives of Hemp Oil Canada, Merit was placed into receivership March 1.
Court-appointed receiver PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), in its first report filed March 31 with Court of King’s Bench in Winnipeg, said it had set a deadline of last Friday (April 21) for formal bids on the Merit assets, and expects to “determine the accepted offer” by Friday this week.
PwC hasn’t yet said how many formal bids it got for the Merit assets by the deadline. In its March 31 report, it said it had already conducted 14 visits to Merit’s Winnipeg plant site with potential buyers and scheduled five more, “with several interested parties traveling from overseas and other parts of North America.”
Burcon, in its release Monday, reiterated it “expects there to be competing bids (and) there is no assurance that the bid will be accepted by the receiver.”
PwC had said in its report that it expects to have reached a “definitive agreement” with a bidder no later than May 12 and to formally close a deal by the end of May at the latest.
If the Merit plant does reopen, it would then need to reconnect its supply chains with farmers in its catchment area.
Daryl Domitruk, executive director with Manitoba Pulse and Soybean Growers, last week told the Manitoba Co-operator that, to his knowledge, growers who’d contracted with Merit for this year have been released from those agreements.
“Then the question is, do I continue to grow peas or do I switch to another crop,” he said. “That’s a decision that the growers have probably made by now.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network
