Ormet Corp., a Hannibal, Ohio-based aluminum producer, still hasn't said—after three extensions of a tentative purchase agreement— whether it will buy the shuttered former Kaiser Aluminum Corp. Mead Works smelter property north of Spokane.

The company announced last week, though, that it plans to restart two idled potlines at its Hannibal smelting facility, where it had said earlier it envisioned using carbon anodes that it would produce at the Mead complex.

That presumably could increase the number of anodes it would need to produce here if it buys the plant and if aluminum sales remain strong, since smelters go through large numbers of anodes, which essentially are big electrodes used in aluminum production.

Ormet said potline restart preparations will start immediately, with the potlines expected to resume operation in the first quarter of 2011, bringing the six-potline smelter to full capacity. To support the increase in production, it said it will add more than 100 positions through a mix of new hires and recalls of laid-off workers.

"We plan to produce about 80,000 metric tonnes of additional metal next year with this restart," said Mike Tanchuk, Ormet's president and CEO, in a news release. "While this is a very small amount of aluminum on a worldwide scale, this step is important to Ormet."

Ormet announced in May that it had agreed tentatively to buy the Mead industrial complex, and said it plans to open the smelter's carbon anode facility if it completes the purchase.

It 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, located at 2111 E. Hawthorne Road.

Due diligence is the process during which a potential buyer evaluates all aspects of a targeted business or property before completing a purchase.

Ormet later said that initial evaluation period had been extended, with the expiration of the tentative purchase and sale agreement reset to Aug. 26. Since then the deadline has been extended two more times—to Oct. 25, then Nov. 30.

Company executives couldn't be reached prior to the expiration of the latest deadline earlier this week. The expiration without an announcement doesn't mean, though, that the deal is dead, since the company earlier didn't announce extensions until after the deadlines had come and gone.

An Ormet executive told the Journal in May that if the company decided to buy the property, it likely would open the carbon anode facility within a year, after Ormet does some startup work there, and would employ 75 to 100 people in full-time, well-paying jobs.

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

St. Louis-based Commercial Development Co., 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. The smelting lines have been removed from the property.

Ormet has been buying anodes from overseas suppliers since 2001, when a carbon plant at its Hannibal smelter closed for regulatory compliance reasons.

It currently is buying all of its anodes from China, but believes it could reap large savings by producing them in the U.S.