Once-promising Gardiner meat-processing facility files for bankruptcy

In a blow to the local food economy, Central Maine Meats, an ambitious company encompassing three USDA-inspected meat processing facilities in Gardiner, filed for bankruptcy protection Wednesday, according to court records.

Barely three years in operation, and funded heavily by over $4 million dollars in state grants and federal government loans, Central Maine Meats is between $100,000 and $500,000 in debt to 64 creditors, including the Internal Revenue Service, UPS and Central Maine Power and the city of Gardiner.

It has assets of less than $50,000 according to the filing.

The state-of-the-art facility, intended to boost and support the local food economy in Maine, opened in 2015. For Bill Lovely, who owns the buildings, Central Maine Meats was an expansion of an earlier meat processing plant, Northeast Meats, which he co-owned with his wife, Anette Lovely, and had opened in 2013. In 2014, Lovely bought a lot in the Libby Hill Business Park where he planned to open a slaughterhouse with an eye to the increased efficiencies of having livestock slaughtered and then cut and packed within a 3-mile radius.

By the next year, the core of what he envisioned was up and running, rolling out in stages over the course of 2014. Central Maine Meats handles beef, pork and lamb and also includes a USDA-inspected poultry facility. The poultry operation is leased to Common Wealth Poultry. Among the services Central Maine Meats offers is halal meat processing, invaluable to Maine’s growing Muslim community, which entails Muslim butchers handling the slaughter.

“We started doing that a few weeks ago,” co-owner Joel Davis said in March.

A long-awaited smokehouse had just opened, and Davis described business in glowing terms.

“Things are going swimmingly,” Davis said.

His bankruptcy petition was filed April 18.

Davis did not immediately respond to a request for an interview Thursday morning. Reached for comment, Lovely said he was unaware of the bankruptcy filing.

“I knew absolutely nothing about that,” Lovely said.

He said he was no longer an owner of the business, simply the landlord, with ownership transferring to Davis in the last 30 to 60 days.

“Joel Davis owns 100 percent,” Lovely said.

Davis’ bankruptcy attorney, James Molleur, could not be reached for comment.

When it opened three years ago, Central Maine Meats was the first new-USDA inspected meat processing and packing facility to open in Maine in decades. That USDA-stamp of approval is key to selling meat across state lines, and for many livestock farmers, Central Maine Meats represented a way to fill an enormous void.

The city of Gardiner has worked closely with Central Maine Meats and its associated businesses to support these local businesses. Common Wealth Poultry received a $100,000 state Community Development Block Grant in July 2016 for training existing workers and making more hires.

At that time, Central Maine Meats was awarded $690,000 in economic development funds, on top of an earlier $640,000 in state funding.

In April 2016, USDA announced a $2,645,000 guaranteed rural development loan to Bill and Anette Lovely to refinance debt and provide working capital for the business. Announcing that loan, USDA’s state director Virginia Manuel described the processing facilities as strengthening Maine’s agricultural communities. “Investments like this one have a tangible economic impact on seven area businesses and 84 local jobs,” Manuel said in a press release at the time.

Patrick Wright, the city of Gardiner’s economic and community development coordinator, said he was aware that Lovely had sold the company to Davis but he, too, was caught off guard by the bankruptcy filing. The city will stand by Central Maine Meats, he said.

“Bankruptcy does not mean the business is closing,” said Wright. “It is legal protection against debts, and we would work with them in any way so they can emerge from that bankruptcy protection.”

Central Maine Meats won the Maine Sunday Telegram’s Source award for “Newcomer” in April 2016.

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