Aug 24, 2010

Park Seed Finds a Buyer

Blackstreet Capital, a Maryland-based MD private equity firm that focuses on control buyouts of underperforming companies, recently made a bid to buy Park Seed, and a federal bankruptcy judge accepted the $12.8 million offer, according to USA Today.

Blackstreet agreed to keep the company’s roughly 200 permanent employees on the payroll for at least three years, according to the article. If it doesn’t, Blackstreet will have to pay $1.5 million in penalties split between the estate of company founder George W. Park, the state and the county.

Park Seed filed for bankruptcy earlier this year, and “when bankruptcy trustee Stan Neely took over in April, he couldn’t figure out how the company integrated its accounting system with its inventory control or its mail-order records,” the article said.

Park Seed moved to Greenwood, S.C., in 1924 and has been an institution there ever since, USA Today wrote. It hosts trial gardens every year, which also are the centerpieces of the South Carolina Festival of Flowers each June.

For more information, visit www.parkseed.com.