💥New Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Filing - Searles Valley Minerals Inc.💥
Call now to purchase shaken-up, desert-based mining operations in California!
Y’all, if you’ve ever wanted to own a mining co. in the Mojave Desert, now is the time.
Running out of coin, on June 15, 2026, the Overland Park, KS-HQ’d Searles Valley Minerals Inc. (“SVM”) and two of its subs (collectively, the “debtors”) filed chapter 11 sale cases — without a stalking horse — in the District of Delaware (Judge Shannon).
In the California desert, the company produces borates, sulfates, salt, and historically soda ash at Searles Lake, and if you hop into a time machine, the earning potential was respectable. In FY17, FY18, and FY19,* the debtors posted the following EBITDA:
But we mentioned California already, right? There’s a particular natural phenomena associated with the state:
That happened to the debtors. On July 4 and July 5, 2019, two earthquakes royally f*cked Independence Day plans and caused, per Ankura Consulting Group, LLC’s Adrian Frankum, “… significant above-ground and subsurface damage to SVM’s operations and the lake.” Earnings were never the same.** Um … which is to say they no longer exist:
Of course, the debtors chime in with other woes. There’s a toot of the “China” horn for a global oversupply of soda ash — oh no, prices are too low!!! — which precipitated a shutdown of those ops in February ‘26 and the related culling of ~240 employees (~46% of the workforce). However, they’re still in the biz; now they just source the soda ash (from China??) and sell it on to their end-customers.