Horsehead Holding has emerged from bankruptcy with plans to restart its state-of-the-art North Carolina zinc production facility idled just before the company went into chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings in early February, the Pittsburgh Business Times reported yesterday. The Pittsburgh-based manufacturer announced late Friday that it's under new ownership and under a bankruptcy plan approved by a Delaware court on Sept. 9, along with a new name, Horsehead Holding LLC instead of its previous name, Horsehead Holding Corp. Horsehead’s environmentally sustainable zinc plant in Mooresboro, N.C., cost upward of $550 million but now stands idled. The new ownership — a group led by Greywolf Capital Management LP — will provide the money to restart the plant, which replaced a longtime zinc smelter that employed more than 500 people in Beaver County before it was closed and the property sold to Royal Dutch Shell for its ethane cracker. While the North Carolina plant was expected to be a boost for Horsehead, the company wasn't able to fix all of the issues that plagued it in two years of operation or get it to its expected annual output.
