A federal agency is seeking to take control of the Boyd Coffee Co. employee pension, claiming it is $8 million underfunded and that the now-defunct company “is financially unable to keep up the plan.”

Boyd needs $17 million to shore up the plan, according to information provided by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., the nation’s insurer of pension benefits. But it has just $9 million in assets.

The Boyd pension has 249 participants.

Boyd sold its assets to a Texas coffee company in 2017 for more than $58 million. Farmer Bros. Co. did not acquire the pension plan.

“At that point, it’s what we call an orphan plan,” said Dan Feinberg, a lawyer and pension law expert based in Oakland, California. “Farmer didn’t buy it. It looks to me like no one is putting additional funds into the plan.”

The Boyd pension plan’s annual report to the IRS, known as a Form 5500, indicates that it did not make any contribution to the plan in 2019 or 2020. The minimum contribution required by federal law in that time was $1.3 million, according to the report. Pension rules allowed Boyd to satisfy the funding requirement by applying for credit for past contributions that exceeded the required minimum.

Boyd officials could not be reached for comment. Calls and emails to what’s left of Boyd and to Farmer Bros. were not returned.

The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. declined an on-the-record interview but agreed to provide some information in written statements. The agency issued public notice of the...

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