Mercer announced that it received approval from the applicable Bankruptcy Court of the acquisition by its wholly-owned subsidiary of a state-of-the-art CLT manufacturing facility located at Spokane, Washington for a price of $50 million previously owned by Katerra. The closing of the sale is scheduled to occur shortly.<\/p>\n
Katerra was founded in 2015 to build low-cost, modular apartment buildings out of prefabricated components. It operated five manufacturing plants \u2014 one in Washington state, one in California and three in India \u2014 and secured more than 400 construction contracts worldwide, but it never turned a profit, according to court papers.<\/p>\n
It filed for Chapter 11 protection in June\u00a0after the bankruptcy of British financier Greensill Capital \u2014 an investor and equity holder of the debtor \u2014 spooked potential lenders and contract counterparties and sunk a proposed $147 million asset sale that had been planned as a follow-up to a $200 million recapitalization in 2020.<\/p>\n
Katerra was seeking approval of the sale of its Washington CLT plant for $50 million and its California plant for more than $21.2 million, both to stalking horse bidders.<\/p>\n
The facility\u00a0has capacity of approximately13 million sq. ft. of 5-ply panels annually or 140,000 m3 of annual production based on 5-day operations; and represents about 30% of the current North American mass timber manufacturing capacity.<\/p>\n
The facility\u00a0is equipped with state-of-the-art extensive automation technologies including one of the largest CLT presses in the world.<\/p>\n
David Gandossi, Chief Executive Officer of the Mercer stated: \u201cWe are very pleased with our\u00a0 impending acquisition of the Facility. It represents an attractive entry point for us into the CLT business with a near new state-of-the-art facility.\u201d<\/p>\n
He continued; \u201cIt fits well with our strategy to expand in the solid wood products space and aligns with a core value to provide sustainable and carbon reducing alternatives for a warming planet\u201d.<\/p>\n
Mercer International Inc. is a global forest products company with operations in Germany and Canada with consolidated annual production capacity of 2.2 million tonnes of pulp and 550 million board feet of lumber.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mercer announced that it received approval from the applicable Bankruptcy Court of the acquisition by its wholly-owned subsidiary of a state-of-the-art CLT manufacturing facility located at Spokane, Washington for a price of $50 million previously owned by Katerra. The closing … Continue reading