Matanuska Creamery plays catch-up on lease payments

Creamery owner Kyle Beus made the payment Wednesday after Daily News inquiries to state officials and the state Creamery Board about the status of the lease. Beus said in an interview Thursday he had been a couple months behind on the lease and made a payment of about $6,000.

The lease requires payments of $1,966 a month for 71 pieces of equipment that range from steel tanks and pumps to trucks.

State Division of Agriculture director Franci Havemeister referred calls about the lease and any payments to Kristan Cole, chair of the Creamery Board, which oversees Mat Maid. Cole then referred questions to an attorney for the board who said a payment had been made, but would not confirm the amount.

"It's a private sector entity," said Peter Ginder. "They are entitled to proprietary data."

Beus declined to go into detail about the company's finances, but said cash flow is an issue, as it is for many new businesses. The Mat-Su based company, which began processing milk in April, sometimes doesn't get paid for sales until a few months later, he said.

Still, he said, "It was bad form on our part to get that far behind (on the lease)."

Beus said the new dairy is "doing, all in all, very well" with milk now being sold in 30 stores in Anchorage and the Valley, including the newly opened Targets in Wasilla and Anchorage.

The dairy also recently signed an agreement with Kaladi Brothers Coffee Company to provide local milk for all its Anchorage stores and a store in Wasilla.

"We started a year ago, and to build a dairy, be into cheese production, be into fluid milk production in six months and have all the milk we are producing in the marketplace in three months ... that sounds pretty good to me," he said.

Beus confirmed the dairy is looking at getting additional financing, possibly through a state agricultural loan, but also possibly from banks.

He expressed frustration with questions about his finances, but acknowledged public interest in the operation, which provided a lifeline for dairy farmers after the state shut down Matanuska Maid in December.

Mat Maid, which was taken over by the state in the mid-1980s, had been the main purchaser of local milk for decades, and the farmers' plight when it closed was widely publicized. Without the new dairy, the four remaining Mat-Su area dairy farmers would have been hard pressed to stay in business.

Since the dairy's closure, the state Department of Natural Resources and Division of Agriculture have taken over management of much of the creamery corporation's assets, including paying utility bills and managing the sale of the Mat Maid building in Anchorage.

In the case of Beus' lease, state officials helped draw up the terms of the lease and had been taking Beus' lease payments. However, state officials said Thursday the Creamery Corporation has agreed to transfer that responsibility to the private accounting firm of Mikunda, Cottrell & Co.

Daily News Reporter S.J. Komarnitsky can be reached at www.adn.com/contact.skomarnitsky or 352-6714.