INMETCO Declares Bankruptcy

For the second time in less than a decade, INMETCO has filed bankruptcy.

The Ellwood City recycling plant filed a Chapter 7 bankruptcy in the Western District of Pennsylvania bankruptcy court on January 31, 2024.

According to published reports, eight employees were kept on at the plant after the initial round of layoffs in October and affected workers received no severance pay.

In 2015, former parent company Horsehead announced INMETCO was expanding its facilities with a $10 million dollar project. Later in 2015, a fire broke out and raged at the Ellwood City facility. A year later, it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in February 2016.

The new bankruptcy filing is recorded as voluntary and was assigned the bankruptcy case number #24-20226 and the bankruptcy petition for THE INTERNATIONAL METALS RECLAMATION COMPANY, LLC showed assets in the range of $50MM – $100MM with liabilities in the range of $10MM – $50MM according to Backruptcyobserver.com.

The report also lists the number of INMETCO creditors is in the range of 100-199.

According to an INMETCO purchasing manager comment in January, the plant is currently idled and that the remaining staff does not have anymore information at the time and there is no restart date yet decided.  Vendor payments are not being processed at this time according to their comment.

The debtor indicated their nature of business as ‘None of the Above’. The options for nature of business in bankruptcies are rather limited and archaic.

They include ‘Health Care Business’, ‘Single Asset Real Estate’, ‘Railroad’, ‘Stockbroker’, ‘Commodity Broker’, ‘Clearing Bank’, or ‘None of the Above’.

INMETCO, first established in 1979, turns zinc-containing dust and discarded batteries into value-added zinc and nickel-based products. According to its Indeed.com profiel, key raw materials for the company include dust from the electric-arc furnaces (EAF) used at steel minimills and residue from the galvanizing of metals. Besides zinc metal (used in galvanizing and alloying), Horsehead’s products include zinc oxide (used in the agricultural, chemical, and pharmaceutical industries), zinc dust (used in corrosion-resistant coatings), and nickel-based metals (used as a feedstock to produce stainless and specialty steels).