Maines Paper & Food Service Inc. filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy yesterday, a move that had been hinted at for weeks following layoffs and sale of the 101-year-old Conklin, N.Y.-based food distribution giant, the Binghamton (N.Y.) Press & Sun-Bulletin reported. The federal court documents, filed in the Eastern District of Delaware, said "it is desirable and in the best interests of the companies, their creditors, employees, stockholders and other stakeholders" that a petition seeking relief under chapter 11 be filed. At $3.5 billion in annual sales, the family-owned Maines Paper & Food Service represented the largest and most expansive privately held business based in the Binghamton region. A $24 million, 340,000-square-foot Conklin warehouse completed in 1997 set the company up to expand from a $400 million enterprise to a distribution juggernaut, with sales and customers growing by geometric proportions. But on May 22, the Maines family ended its connection to the 101-year-old company it began. The business was sold to Lineage Logistics, a Novi, Michigan-based "cold storage" company that has been on an acquisition spree since 2013. No acquisition price was disclosed. A week before that, Maines filed a notice with the New York state Department of Labor, stating 119 workers had been laid off from its Broadline operation. Layoffs at that time were partly attributed to "unforeseeable business circumstances prompted by Covid-19." Although circumstances leading to the company's decline had been brewing for months, if not years, before the coronavirus pandemic, documents prepared in April as part of a layoff notice in an Ohio location said many of Maines' customer operations had either gone dark or seen drastic drops in sales.
