Mercer County plant to be restarted

Staff report

Greenville, pa.

A Cincinnati-based supplier of mechanical connectors has acquired a shuttered extrusions plant in Mercer County.

ILSCO, one of the nation’s largest suppliers of mechanical connectors, purchased the former Signature Aluminum plant Wednesday after more than a year of negotiations.

ILSCO plans to restart the plant, which ceased operations when Signature Aluminum filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2009, said Jim Valentine, ILSCO’s chief financial officer.

The plant produced aluminum extrusions, a key component in the production of ILSCO’s mechanical connectors, Valentine said.

The company has not decided how much product the plant will initially produce or how many employees it will hire to work at the plant, Valentine said.

“We will be getting back into the extrusion process,” he said. “The initial goal would be to service internal needs before expanding to sell to other customers.”

The Penn-Northwest Development Corporation, an economic-development agency based in Mercer County, was instrumental in ILSCO’s decision to purchase the plant, Valentine said.

“They were a signature part of getting us involved,” he said. “Without their involvement, I am not sure the transaction would have come to fruition.”