3/24/2009 - Today's lesson, Bankruptcy Court can be a really slow moving process.  Yesterday and today I am covering the bankruptcy auction of Agri-Processors meat packing plant in Postville.

Here's the goal, the plant borrowed a lot of money to keep it going.  The people it borrowed the money from, want their money back.  That total tab is more than $26 million.

However, the only way those companies will get their money back is if somebody is willing to buy the plant and everything inside it.

Right now, the best offer is from a company called Kosher Standards L.L.C.  But, they are only willing to pay $15.7 million.  You can see how the creditors don't want to sell for that amount - it's more than $10 million short.

However, it seems to be more apparent the longer this auction goes that the bids might not get much higher.  It's a real high-stakes poker game, huh?  That is somewhat exciting.  What's not exciting is that it takes about 30 minutes between each bid creating a buzz kill.

I'm pulling everything the lawyers say and putting it into some sort of story for the news tonight.  Hopefully we'll have some sort of resolve, or a direction towards resolve soon.

A local angle here, Sealed Air, a company with a large Cedar Rapids plant says they are owed $578,960 from the plant.  That's small change as compared to what everyone else wants, but it is big money to me.

Did you know, since this is in Federal Bankruptcy Court, we aren't allowed to bring in a cellphone, camera or any sort of electronic equipment.  We can bring in all of that in Iowa's district courts, but not in Federal Court.