Ace Baking Co. files Chapter 11.
Ace Baking Company, the country's largest ice cream cone manufacturer, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Ace had sales of approximately $50 million in 1999, short of its projected goals, while its debts, according to Peter Blain, a bankruptcy attorney representing the company, stood at $31.7 million to secured creditors and another $4 million in unsecured debts. The filing will give Ace protection while it reorganizes. Company owners had decided originally to sell all of the company's assets, but the company's bankers would not agree to provide financial support while buyers were identified. Blain said that the value of the company's assets has not yet been determined, but that they are unlikely to be equal to or more than the company's debt.
According to published reports, Ace will now focus on selling its foodservices operation, which supplies cones under the Eat-It-All brand to leading chains such as McDonald's, Baskin-Robbins, and Dairy Queen. Ace purchased the Eat-It--All brand two years ago from Sweetheart Cup Company. The company will look to come out of the reorganization still owning its production operations that manufacture cones for marketers in the frozen novelties industry.
Founded in 1948, Green Bay, WI-based Ace Baking Company has a total of 300 employees at its cone manufacturing operations in Chicago, Atlanta, and Dallas, and papermaking operations in Owings Mills, MD. Selling the foodservice operation may affect the workers at the company's paper company, as the wrappings produced there are for the foodservice cones made by Ace. But the 150 workers in the company's Green Bay facilities should experience no changes as their production is for the novelties business.
