Throughput, yield, and the customer concentration question: food plants are underwritten on the production floor, not the brand deck.
Food manufacturing credits start with mass balance: raw input in, finished product out, with the yield and throughput assumptions evidenced against the equipment specification and comparable plants rather than the sponsor’s deck. Capacity utilization is the capture-rate analogue — the pro forma’s revenue is the plant’s realistic utilization curve times contracted and pipeline volume — and customer concentration is the standing risk: a plant built around one co-pack agreement or one retail program carries that counterparty’s credit inside its own.
Regulatory readiness is technical-dimension content with binary consequences: facility design to the applicable food-safety standards, certifications the target channels require, and the commissioning-to-qualification timeline customers impose before volume ships. Labor availability for production shifts — checked against BLS local wage and employment data — belongs in the operating build, not the assumptions footnote.
The firm’s processing record runs from VAPG-scale producer ventures to a $38,110,000 USDA B&I sugar refinery restoration — 359,000 square feet, 2.05 million tons of annual cane capacity, dual-state market access analyzed as the demand case — with Reg 5001’s technical factors driving the diligence depth heavy processing demands.
Engagements are typically initiated by the borrower, with lender or CDC confirmation obtained before work begins — institutions apply differing rules, so sponsors should confirm the required path with their lending contact — and are delivered in 10 to 15 business days from complete project data, and built to the program framework that governs the credit — SBA SOP 50 10 8 coverage minimums of 1.15x operating and 1.00x global, the 37-factor structure of USDA 7 CFR Part 5001, or the 1.20x convention of conventional credit policy — with a ten-year pro forma, sensitivity at ±5/10/15 percent, rate stress to +3.0 percent, and Monte Carlo analysis as standard equipment.
President, Wert-Berater, Inc. — independent feasibility study consultants since 1998. 4,000+ engagements completed across all 50 states and internationally, evaluating $41.2 billion in project value for SBA, USDA, EB-5, conventional, and institutional financing decisions. Fiduciary duty runs to the lender and agency in every engagement.
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