No plans for restarting production at Indalex

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Girard Mayor James Melfi

A local aluminum plant is changing hands and may be sold again.

By Don Shilling

GIRARD — A Norwegian-based company proposing to take over a former Indalex Aluminum Solutions plant has no plans to restart production, but Mayor James Melfi isn’t giving up hope.

“I’m hoping that with an uptick in the economy, it can be used for manufacturing again,” Melfi said.

Sapa Holding has an agreement with Chicago-based Indalex to take over its 10 plants in the U.S. and Canada. The deal is expected to close at the end of this month.

The local plant may not be with Sapa for long, however.

Scott Langdon, a spokesman for Indalex, said Sapa has given May Extrusions until Jan. 21, 2010, to work out a deal to buy the Girard plant. He didn’t have any information on May Extrusions.

Sapa executives came to Girard on Monday to meet with city officials. The executives indicated they had no plans to restart operations, Melfi said.

They were in town to talk to city officials about occupancy permits and other documents that needed to be on file.

“They were just touching base,” the mayor said.

About 280 workers lost their jobs last year when Indalex closed the local plant because of a slowdown in the housing industry. Among its products were aluminum extrusions that were used to make building products.

About 40 office workers have remained on the job, however.

Conditions continued to worsen for Indalex because of the recession, and it filed for bankruptcy protection this year. It reached a sales agreement in June with Sapa, and that deal was approved by a bankruptcy court judge in Delaware.

Sapa calls itself the largest producer of aluminum shapes in the world.

The local plant used to be owned by Easco, which was a Girard-based company that had 11 plants in five states. Caradon, an English company, bought Easco in 1999 and merged it into its Indalex subsidiary.

shilling@vindy.com