Hardinge is now in the wind-down and claims-reconciliation phase, with the GUC Trust—not the former operating debtors—driving the docket under the liquidation plan. The court recently sustained the Trust’s non-substantive claim objectionDkt. 784, cure-cost claim objectionDkt. 786 and priority-reclassification objectionDkt. 788, disallowing unsupported, equity, late-filed, duplicate, superseded, and cure-cost claims and reclassifying certain tax-penalty, administrative, and wage claims. The case is therefore focused on fixing the allowed-claims pool rather than rehabilitating Hardinge as a standalone debtor.
Hardinge and six operating affiliates filed Chapter 11 on July 29, 2024 after several liquidity pressures converged. The attempted sale of Hardinge’s China operations stalled in Chinese regulatory review; the 2021 Weisser acquisition required materially more support than expected, including more than $70 million of intercompany funding and approximately €13 million of comfort letters; and consolidation of Kellenberger’s Swiss manufacturing operations left elevated inventories of unsold finished goods. With incumbent lenders unwilling to advance further liquidity, roughly $106.7 million of funded debt outstanding and the credit facility due July 31, the company entered bankruptcy only days after Centre Lane acquired the secured debt and provided a $2.9 million bridge loan, as detailed in the first-day declarationDkt. 18.
The case began on an expedited going-concern sale track. Before filing, Houlihan Lokey contacted 81 potential parties, and the debtors were finalizing a stalking-horse transaction while seeking a $27.35 million DIP facility, including $24.2 million of interim availability, to fund operations and the sale process. That process ultimately moved the global machine-tool and workholding businesses out of the estates, while the remaining assets and liabilities were placed on a liquidation path administered through the GUC Trust. The present work is therefore claim allowance and reconciliation: the July 22, 2026 hearing was cancelled after the omnibus relief was resolvedDkt. 789, and the next scheduled omnibus claims hearing is September 24, 2026.
