Ormet, Corp., a Hannibal, Ohio-based aluminum producer, has terminated a tentative agreement to buy the shuttered former Kaiser Aluminum Corp. Mead Works smelter property north of Spokane.

In a brief news release announcing the action, the company said, though, that it intends to continue discussions with the owner of the property "to investigate a future transaction."

Ormet didn't say why it decided not to complete the purchase, the deadline for which had been extended three times, and company executives couldn't be reached for comment. Robert E. Schoelch, vice president of asset management for St. Louis-based Commercial Development Co., which owns the Kaiser property, declined to comment on details of the negotiations, citing confidentiality agreements, but said that sale discussions with Ormet, as well as a couple of other interested parties, are continuing.

Ormet announced in May that it had reached a preliminary agreement to buy the Mead industrial complex, at 2111 E. Hawthorne Road, and said it planned to open the smelter's carbon anode facility if it completed the purchase. It planned to use the anodes produced there to supply its smelting operation in Ohio.

The former Kaiser carbon anode facility, though, occupies only a fraction of the overall Mead complex, and an Ormet executive said the company hadn't decided what it would do with the rest of the factory or the 180 acres of land that also were to be included in the transaction.

The executive told the Journal that if the company decided to buy the property, it likely would open the carbon anode facility within a year and would employ 75 to 100 people there.

It originally said it planned to make a final purchase decision near the end of the second quarter this year after completing a due diligence evaluation of the property. The parties, though, later agreed three times to postpone the deadline for a decision, with the final expiration date set for Nov. 30.

Carbon anodes essentially are large electrodes used in aluminum production. Ormet has been buying them from overseas suppliers since 2001, and hoped to reap large savings by producing them in the U.S.

Commercial Development, an industrial property purchaser and asset salvager, bought the smelter from Kaiser in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for $7.4 million in 2004, and since then has been selling off equipment and materials there.