Ormet Corp., a Hannibal, Ohio-based aluminum producer, has postponed for a second time a final decision on whether to buy the shuttered former Kaiser Aluminum Corp. Mead Works smelter property north of Spokane.

In a statement issued last week, it said it had agreed with the current owner of the sprawling smelter property to extend its preliminary purchase agreement to Oct. 25 "to allow for further due diligence of the plant and its assets." Due diligence is the process during which a potential buyer evaluates all aspects of a targeted business or property before completing a purchase.

Ormet announced in May that it had agreed tentatively to buy the Mead industrial complex, and said it plans to open the carbon anode facility there if it completes the purchase. It said it planned to make a final purchase decision near the end of the second quarter after completing a due-diligence evaluation of the property, located at 2111 E. Hawthorne Road. It later said the evaluation period had been extended, with the expiration of the tentative purchase and sale agreement reset to Aug. 26.

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 smelter 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.

If Ormet buys the property, it would use the facility there to supply its smelting operation in Ohio with carbon anodes, which essentially are large electrodes used in aluminum production. The company 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.