Smelter's pier attracts potential buyer
Friday, April 16, 2004 11:55 PM PDT
By Pat Forgey
Printable version
E-mail this articleJust days before an auction of Longview Aluminum's equipment is scheduled to begin next week, a buyer for part of the plant has emerged, the bankrupt company's court-appointed trustee said Friday.
It's not the smelter the buyer wants, however, but the plant's pier, sophisticated ship-unloading equipment and storage facilities to use in importing a mineral product and possibly doing some basic processing of it, said Bill Brandt, a Chicago businessman appointed to oversee the liquidation of the smelter that once employed 900 workers.
"It might offer some employment base for Longview, an industrial use creating jobs," he said.
Brandt declined to identify the company or the commodity, but said it could continue industrial use of the property and bring new jobs to Longview. He declined to say how many, but acknowledged that it would be far fewer than the smelter. The buyer would not use the potlines, he said.
"It may be we take down the aluminum smelting lines, but a lot of the other infrastructure stays up," he said.
The pier Reynolds once used to import alumina has long been viewed by local economic development officials, who hope to see the plant site redeveloped, as one of its prime attributes. Getting environmental permits for new structures in the river is increasingly difficult, they say.
Brandt said he is willing to pull the shipping-related items from the auction scheduled to start Tuesday, but only if the potential buyer puts up some money.
"He may be only a few days away from putting a deposit down," he said.
The United Steelworkers of America, which represents the plant's workers, has been hoping a buyer for the entire plant would emerge to operate it, but that hope is getting ever more faint as the auction approaches and plant equipment and raw materials are sold off.
Jobs at a new importing and processing facility would be welcome, especially for former aluminum workers, said Gaylan Prescott, staff representative of the United Steelworkers of America in Longview.
"We have a number of highly qualified people able to run that unloader and manage those tanks," he said.
Brandt cautioned that the deal still would be complicated to put together.
"The devil will be in the details," he said.
When Alcoa Inc. took over Reynolds Metals in 2000 and sold the smelter to Michael Lynch's Longview Aluminum LLC in 2001, it retained ownership of the 500-acre plant site and leased it to Lynch. Parts of the site are contaminated from years of metal production there, and retaining ownership of the land ensured Alcoa would be able to supervise the cleanup for which it remains legally responsible.
For a deal to happen "Alcoa will have to be a participant in it," Brandt said.
For Brandt to sell off the shipping equipment from the Longview Aluminum estate for use there, the new buyer would have to have a lease from Alcoa.
Brandt said he thought it would be in Alcoa's interest to have a new user of the property. "There's substantial upside to Alcoa," he said.
If the site remains in industrial use, state environmental officials are not likely to require an immediate, expensive cleanup, he said.
"A lot of the potential remedial issues they have they'll likely be able to, in fact, put off almost indefinitely," he said.
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