The owner of Coharie Farms, a troubled hog company based in Clinton and one of the largest pork producers in the country, will be in a federal courtroom today to discuss the company's recent decision to file for bankruptcy.
The ultimate plan is to liquidate the company, which will mean eventual layoffs for some of the 170 workers at the company's farms, grain elevators, mill and offices, said Anne Faircloth, Coharie's owner and daughter of former U.S. Sen. Lauch Faircloth.
"There isn't a person raising hogs right now who isn't suffering," Anne Faircloth said. "I wish there was some way we could have avoided taking this step."
Coharie filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Friday afternoon, according to court documents. The decision came after as many as 30 farmers complained that Coharie hadn't paid them for corn they delivered to company feed mills. Bankruptcy filings show that Coharie owes at least $3.12 million to various vendors, including several farmers.
Oran Young, a Bladenboro farmer, is owed $172,400 by Coharie for corn he sold the company this fall.
It amounts to three years' worth of profit for Young, 74, who is hoping to get at least some of what he's owed.
"Sure, it makes you angry; it makes you mad as hell," said Young about not being paid. "What can you do?"
A hearing will be held today in the Raleigh federal bankruptcy court to discuss Coharie's bankruptcy filing. Anne Faircloth owns 75 percent of the company, while Nelson Waters, who founded Coharie in 1972 with Lauch Faircloth, owns the remaining quarter.
A 2008 spike in grain prices and a $20 drop in price per hog left Coharie with losses of $13.3 million in 2008, according to the bankruptcy fillings. Losses this year have reached $17 million, after public consumption of pork dropped during the current epidemic of H1N1 flu, commonly called swine flu, despite health experts' assurances that the flu and consumption of pork were not linked.
North Carolina is the second-largest pork- producing state in the country, and Coharie is one of the largest in the state. The company has operations in 11 Eastern North Carolina counties.
Coharie, which sells its meat to the Virginia-based pork giant Smithfield, was ranked in 2009 as the 22nd-largest pork producer in the country, according to the annual analysis conducted by Successful Farming magazine.
