Sale of Property

12 Months Ended

Dec. 31, 2012

Notes to Financial Statements

Sale of Property

16.  Sale of Property

In December 2008, the Company sold property it owned in Bridgeport, Connecticut to B&E Juices, Inc. for $2.5 million.  The property consisted of approximately four acres of land and 48,000 sq. feet of warehouse space.  The property was the site of the original Acme United scissor factory which opened in 1887 and was closed in 1996.

Under the terms of the sale agreement, and as required by the Connecticut Transfer Act, the Company is responsible to remediate any environmental contamination on the property. During 2008, the Company hired an independent environmental consulting firm to conduct environmental studies in order to identify the extent of the environmental contamination on the property and to develop a remediation plan. As a result of those studies and the estimates prepared by the independent environmental consulting firm, the Company recorded an undiscounted liability of approximately $1.8 million in the fourth quarter of 2008, related to the remediation of the property. This accrual included the costs of required investigation, remedial activities, and post-remediation operating and maintenance.

Remediation work on the project began in the third quarter of 2009 and was completed during the third quarter of 2012. During 2012, the Company paid approximately $115,000 for work related to the remediation and has approximately $124,000 remaining in its accrual for environmental remediation, of which approximately $65,000 was classified as a current liability.

In addition to the remediation work, the Company, with the assistance of its independent environmental consulting firm, must continue to monitor contaminant levels on the property to ensure they comply with set governmental standards. The Company expects that the monitoring period could last a minimum of two years with the estimated completion by the end of 2014.

The change in the accrual for environmental remediation for the year ended December 31, 2012 follows (in thousands):

Balance at December 31, 2011	Payments	Balance at December 31, 2012
$  239	$  (115)	$  124

Also, as part of the sale, the Company has provided the buyer with a mortgage of $2.0 million at six percent interest.  The mortgage is payable in monthly installments with the outstanding balance due in full, one year after remediation and monitoring on the property have been completed