CL Fi­nan­cial has sold the for­mer Sea­gram dis­tillery in Lawrence­burg, In­di­ana for US$29 mil­lion (TT$186 mil­lion), an of­fi­cial of the Gov­ern­ment-con­trolled con­glom­er­ate con­firmed yes­ter­day. The of­fi­cial said that the new own­er of the dis­tillery is MGP In­gre­di­ents Inc, a com­pa­ny based in Atchi­son, Kansas. The new own­ers bought the 80-acre fa­cil­i­ty from Lawrence­burg Dis­tillers In­di­ana LLC, an en­ti­ty cre­at­ed by CL Fi­nan­cial, which is the par­ent com­pa­ny of the An­gos­tu­ra Group of rum and bit­ters. Ac­cord­ing to a press re­lease, the deal in­cludes dis­tillery as­sets, bulk bar­rel stor­age fa­cil­i­ties, blend­ing op­er­a­tions and a tank farm. It does not in­clude pack­ag­ing and bot­tling op­er­a­tions that are lo­cat­ed ad­ja­cent to the dis­tillery. Those op­er­a­tions are ex­pect­ed to be sold to a third par­ty, MG­PI said.

MG­PI will pay cash equal to the cur­rent as­sets mi­nus cur­rent li­a­bil­i­ties of the dis­tillery as­sets, cur­rent­ly es­ti­mat­ed at $15 mil­lion, as of the clos­ing date. Pend­ing reg­u­la­to­ry ap­proval and clos­ing con­di­tions, the pur­chase is ex­pect­ed to close in the fourth quar­ter of 2011 or the first quar­ter of 2012. MG­PI's CEO Tim­o­thy Newkirk said the deal al­lows the com­pa­ny to start pro­duc­ing pre­mi­um bour­bon and corn and rye whiskeys, while al­so in­creas­ing its gin and grain neu­tral spir­it prod­ucts. "We are ex­treme­ly ex­cit­ed about the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ac­quire the LDI dis­tillery, which is one of the largest bev­er­age al­co­hol dis­til­leries in the world," he said. "The pur­chase is in re­sponse to the nu­mer­ous re­quests from our cus­tomers to sup­ply them with high qual­i­ty whiskeys and bour­bons, in ad­di­tion to our pre­mi­um vod­kas and gins."

The fa­cil­i­ty, lo­cat­ed in the city of Lawrence­burg in the south­east cor­ner of In­di­ana, was es­tab­lished in 1847 un­der the name Rossville Dis­tillery. Through the years, it has been owned and op­er­at­ed at var­i­ous pe­ri­ods by Joseph E. Sea­gram and Sons and Pern­od Ri­card. It was ac­quired by CL Fi­nan­cial in 2007 at which time the fa­cil­i­ty as­sumed its cur­rent name. CL Fi­nan­cial was found­ed by Lawrence Duprey. It got in­to dif­fi­cul­ties in Jan­u­ary 2009 and was bailed out by the Gov­ern­ment. Both par­ties signed an agree­ment in June 2009 which gave the Gov­ern­ment con­trol of CL Fi­nan­cial by al­low­ing the State to ap­point a ma­jor­i­ty of di­rec­tors to the con­glom­er­ate's board. That agree­ment ends in June 2012.