Three years after Aldergrove-based Vicinity Motor Corp opened a brand-new factory in Ferndale, Washington, the facility has been sold to regain some of the money the bankrupt firm owes creditors.
A Dec. 19 order filed in B.C. Supreme Court approved the sale of the 62,000 sq. ft. plant and 148 all-electric VMC 1200 trucks for $10.5 million U.S. to C & Y Investment LLC, a California company.
Vicinity opened its new “Buy America compliant” vehicle assembly facility in 2023. It was intended to be the company’s first U.S. assembly plant, saying it would have an assembly capacity of up to 850 low- and zero-emission buses and 6,250 Class 3 all-electric trucks.
An online realty ad described the building, constructed on a 4.4 acre site in the Pacific Fern Business Park, as a “virtually new, state of the art facility with the best of everything” that had been “designated as a foreign trade zone that provides import/export advantages related to the payment of duties and tariffs for maximum leverage.”
The bus and truck maker owes $69 million, half of it to the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) and Export Development Canada (EDC), and the rest to a long list of foreign and domestic businesses.
A tally of creditors published by receiver FTI Consulting Canada Inc. shows Vicinity owed $22.4 million to the bank and $11.9 million to EDC, the federal agency that provides assistance to Canadian companies trying to expand into international markets.
Both were the only secured creditors listed, meaning they have the right to be paid before any of the others on the list.
BC Transit is suing Vicinity for $5 million, claiming that many of its buses leaked, causing water damage to 118 of them.
The transit authority said 118 Vicinity buses had saturated, rotten, or deteriorated plywood floors, because water was getting in through body openings, and window sealants had been poorly or inconsistently applied.
First launched in 2008 as Grande West, the manufacturer was established to fill a request for smaller and mid-size bus orders that.