Hronis is now in a sale-driven Chapter 11 whose near-term direction turns on Conterra’s asserted credit-bid rights, with an evidentiary hearing set for June 18, 2026 after the court granted Conterra’s request to bifurcate and advance that issue in the sale process through the credit-bid evidentiary hearing orderDkt. 384. The debtor and its affiliates entered Chapter 11 on March 6, 2026, after installing a special restructuring governance structure, with Matthew English as independent director and Allen Soong and Scott Avila as co-CROs, and filed as an integrated Hronis Ranch enterprise with funds expected to be available for unsecured creditors under the Chapter 11 petitionDkt. 1.
The cases opened around the need to preserve a seasonal agricultural business while addressing a highly levered secured balance sheet. Hronis Ranch operates thousands of acres of grape and citrus farming, packing, and distribution assets, and first-day relief focused on keeping bank accounts, employees, and case administration functioning across a ten-debtor enterprise with more than 1,000 creditors, as reflected in the cash-management declarationDkt. 11 and the consolidated creditor-list declarationDkt. 18. The core capital issue was Conterra’s prepetition secured position: the DIP materials identified roughly $149.2 million of Conterra prepetition revolver and term-loan debt secured by substantially all assets, while the debtor sought immediate postpetition liquidity to avoid disruption to farming operations.
That financing path tied the case directly to a fast sale track. The debtor sought a $22.303 million Conterra DIP facility, with $10 million available on an interim basis, priming liens, superpriority claims, cash-collateral use, weekly budget controls, and sale milestones requiring a bidding-procedures motion within 14 days, bidding-procedures approval within 35 days, sale approval within 90 days, and closing within five days after a sale order, as set out in the DIP financing motionDkt. 38. The court authorized interim financing and cash-collateral use, including adequate-protection liens and section 507(b) claims for prepetition secured parties, a $25,000 committee investigation budget, and recognition of the debtor’s approximately $149.2 million prepetition secured obligations, through the interim DIP orderDkt. 79.
The live dispute is no longer simply access to liquidity; it is whether Conterra can use its secured debt as currency in the sale. Conterra, the debtor, and the creditors’ committee later stipulated that they had reached a preliminary agreement to settle disputes over credit-bidding rights and extended June 8 deadlines to June 10 to finalize a court-approval package, potentially avoiding the June 18 evidentiary fight, through the credit-bid stipulationDkt. 385. If that settlement does not resolve the issue, the June 18 hearing will test Conterra’s credit-bid position before the continued sale hearing on June 30 and the broader case status conference on July 14, for which the debtor must file a status report by July 7 under the status-conference service noticeDkt. 380.
