Glass plant assets to be auctioned off

On Tuesday, Justice Marrocco of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruled in favour of an application from receiver Grant Thornton to begin auctioning off the assets of Barber Glass.

Dates will be posted online by the two auctioneers involved. Asset Engineering will be auctioning the Guelph facility assets, while the Danbury Group will be auctioning the Collingwood facility assets.

In his endorsement of the receiver's actions, Justice Marrocco, wrote that in spite of a number of prospective purchasers were pursued in an effort to keep Barber's plants open.

"All parties agree that a turnkey offer would have been extremely attractive," the judge noted in his endorsement. "Jobs in the Collingwood and Guelph areas would have been preserved; a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility would have remained in Canada as opposed to being auctioned to the highest bidder."

That disappoints Martin Oosterveld, who worked with a team of people - under the auspices of the Centre for Business and Economic Development - to pull together a deal that would have saved the local plant, and perhaps resulted in the Guelph and Collingwood facilities being amalgamated here.

Barber Glass ran into financial trouble late last year, and in November the company's main creditor, the Bank of Montreal, made application for a receivership order.

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