Ohio’s Columbus Steel Castings Co., which operated as the country’s largest single site steel foundry until halting operations on May 9, has filed for bankruptcy protection, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Lawyers who put the factory into chapter 11 protection on Monday blamed the factory’s financial troubles on a broken furnace that, for six weeks last year, halted shipments for steel castings it manufactured that are installed into freight and passenger railcars, locomotives, mining equipment and construction equipment. The breakdown cost roughly $15 million, according to documents filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del. Columbus Steel Castings’ lawyers said they found a potential buyer for the company’s 90-acre operations in Columbus, Ohio, but they didn’t identify the buyer or state the value of its offer. Columbus Steel Castings filed for bankruptcy along with three other U.S. manufacturers of metal-based products that plan to continue operating during the case: Zero Manufacturing Inc., Jorgenson Forge Corp. and the operator of Commercial Metal Forming. All four companies are owned by parent company Constellation Enterprises LLC, which also filed for chapter 11 and said the companies collectively face $238 million in debt.
