CLEVELAND -- A Cleveland law office will hold an April 2 foreclosure sale for two closed-down Ohio factories of injection molder Core Systems LLC.
Whirlpool Corp. terminated its business with Core Systems earlier this year, and the molder subsequently closed its plants in Painesville, in northeast Ohio, and Mount Gilead, north of Columbus.
Cleveland lawyer Thomas Coffey, of the Tucker Ellis firm, represents the secured creditor, Extrusion Acquisition LLC. He placed a notice of foreclosure sale in the Cleveland Plain Dealer and Columbus Dispatch. The public foreclosure sale will be at Coffey's office in downtown Cleveland on April 2 at 11:30 a.m.
Coffey said Extrusion Acquisition is a subsidiary of Chicago-based Special Opportunity Value Fund.
Unlike a typical auction, where machinery is pieced out and sold individually, the Core Systems sale only has two lots. Lot 1 is everything in the Painesville plant. Lot 2 is everything in Mount Gilead. The sale will include all equipment, molds, inventory, accounts receivable, customer lists and other things.
"Nobody's going to be able to come in and buy one or two machines. It's not that kind of an auction," Coffey said.
Instead, the goal is to have somebody buy one or both locations and try to operate them as a going business, Coffey said.
"We've had some people already submit fairly detailed bids," he said in a March 29 telephone interview.
The Painesville factory, which was Core's headquarters plant, has 61 injection presses included in the sale, with clamping forces from 60-720 tons. The Mount Gilead plant has 24 presses from 120-1,000 tons. The model years range from the mid-1990s to 2005.
"We don't know if somebody's going to buy one location or the other location," Coffey said. "We have had an awful lot of interest in both of these, but just because somebody buys all the equipment in one location or the other doesn't guarantee that they will continue to run the same kind of business in the same location once they own it."
Unlike most equipment auctions, prospective buyers cannot go to a convenient website and see a list of all of the equipment. But Coffey said he will send details to qualified buyers.
"You have to have a written offer in. You can't really just show up and bid," he said. Potential buyers must show the financial ability to close within 72 hours of the auction, he said.
