Logan County plant’s technology a first for U.S.

An Australian company expects that its planned Logan County facility will reclaim about 25 percent of U.S. aluminum manufacturing waste that’s now going to landfills.

Simon Wells, executive director of MHM Metals, which will do business under the name Alreco, said production at the old ITW building on Ky. 79 should begin by the end of the first quarter of 2013.

This will be the first U.S. plant using technology proven in Australia that breaks down the waste products of aluminum manufacturing - aluminum saltcake and dross - and returns it to usable products, Wells said.

“We even expect to begin reclaiming some of those materials that have already gone to landfills,” he said.

Wells, Gov. Steve Beshear and a host of officials made the announcement Monday to a room filled with about 175 people.

Quoting an old Pointer Sisters tune, Russellville Mayor Mark Stratton said: “I’m so excited and I just can’t hide it; I’m about to lose control and I think I like it.”

Stratton and others at the announcement had good reason to be excited.

Alreco is the first new company to locate in Logan County in many years, and the 150,000-square-foot building, accompanied by more than 100 acres that Alreco is purchasing, has been vacant since 1991.

At least initially, the company will hire 30 people.

John Pugh, who will be the local plant manager, said hiring of a local management team will begin in about three months, about the same time construction is expected to begin.

“We are still working through some environmental (studies) of the property but don’t expect anything that will be a problem,” Wells said.
Production employees will be hired in early 2013, Pugh said.

The company will invest $25 million in the facility, but Wells hinted that it could consider bringing other processes to the site later.

He also predicts that the Logan County facility will draw attention from the aluminum industry as a whole and Logan County could potentially see spin-off or support industries locate here as a result.

Beshear said the announcement was so important that he wanted to spend the last day of his first term marking the occasion. Beshear was sworn in to a second term as governor during a private ceremony at midnight and was scheduled to repeat the oath publicly this afternoon.

There were many people in the crowd excited that the property will see new life, but probably none more than Ricky Thurston, who along with four others purchased the property about six years ago from ITW.

“We’ve had a couple of companies interested in the property but none followed through,” he said.

Thurston, who didn’t disclose his purchase price, said the deal ended up being a good investment for them.

State paperwork filed to get tax incentives lists the purchase price as $850,000. The company qualified for state and local wage assessment incentives for $825,000 over 10 years.

Former Logan Circuit Court Judge Bill Fuqua was at the announcement. Fuqua was on the county’s industrial board decades ago when it recruited ITW, a fastener company, to the county.

Fuqua said he hated to see the company vacate that building and several years later leave the county altogether. But he’s happy that the old building will once again be a productive part of Logan County’s industrial base.