GLASS PLANT MAY BE SAVED
Published: Tuesday, August 16, 2005
By Michael Yeomans
Pittsburgh Tribune Review
Glass bottles could once again roll off the production lines at Glenshaw Glass Co. in Shaler.
Negotiations continued into the early evening Monday to sell the closed company, which yesterday was only weeks away from having its glass-making equipment auctioned to the highest bidder.
Riding to the 11th-hour rescue is Pittsburgh businessman William Kelman, who saved L.E. Smith Glass Co. of Mt. Pleasant, Westmoreland County, from a similar fate earlier this year.
Glenshaw Glass was heavily damaged in September's flooding and closed in November, idling 350 workers. The closing came after PNC Bank ousted former owner John Ghaznavi for defaulting on $11 million in loans. Glenshaw Glass has been controlled the past nine months by Pittsburgh-based Meridian Group.
Meridian President Margaret Good said yesterday that the last remaining hurdle to a sale is for the plant’s union, the Glass Molders Pottery Plastics and Allied Workers International Union, to waive a clause in a contract it negotiated with Ghaznavi stipulating that any new operator recognize the labor agreement.
A deal has been reached with Kelman in principal and the company’s unsecured creditors have agreed to it, Good said. Terms were not disclosed. She previously estimated it will take $5 million to get Glenshaw's three furnaces back into production.
Walter Thorn, international vice president for the union, said yesterday the union has yet to have a direct discussion with Kelman. Waiving the so-called successor clause in the contract would be “negotiable,” Thorn said.
Under Good, Glenshaw Glass has sold off nearly all of its remaining $11 million inventory and collected most of about $5 million due from customers.
If the sale falls through, Pittsburgh-based Harry Davis & Co. is scheduled to auction off the plant’s equipment on Sept. 14 and 15. A New York commercial real estate firm, meanwhile, had been preparing to market the land along Route 8.
Dan Casinelli, chief operating officer of D.G. Yuengling & Son Inc. brewery in Pottsville, Schuylkill County, formerly Glenshaw's largest customer, is rooting for the plant's revival.
“The glass situation is getting critical,” he said. “We operate every day not knowing if we’re going to be able to get the glass (bottles) we need to survive,” he said.
He said big brewers such as Anheuser-Busch and Miller Brewing Co. monopolize production of the few remaining glass producers in a consolidating industry. This leaves smaller brewers to take whatever spare production capacity those few, large producers can spare. It is difficult to obtain glass from the nation’s largest bottle-maker, Toledo, Ohio-based Owens-Illinois Inc., even though Owens operates a bottle-making plant in Brookville, Jefferson County, Casinelli said.
Joseph Piccirrilli, CEO of Pittsburgh Brewing, another former Glenshaw customer, also said his company would be happy to buy from a local supplier again, “as long as the quality is still there.”
Kelman bought the L.E. Smith Glass Co. property in Mt. Pleasant at a sheriff’s sale for $16,000 in February after previously agreeing to pay an undisclosed amount for the equipment, inventory and receivables.
The company had shut down after being forced into a court-ordered receivership in July 2004.
myeomans@tribweb.com
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