A bankruptcy trustee on Monday accepted bids on several of the former Magnetation and ERP Iron Ore facilities, providing a timeline on when the bankruptcy-burdened sites might finally have a new owner, the Duluth (Minn.) News Tribune reported. In federal bankruptcy court, the trustee approved Prairie River Minerals’ $1.95 million bid to purchase Plant 1 in Keewatin and the Jessie Load-Out facility near Grand Rapids, Minn., while also approving a $1.7 million bid by MJM Minerals for Plant 2 near Bovey. The trustee, Nauni Manty, recommended Prairie River Mineral's bids in a motion to sale filed last month. A judge will consider the motion for the sale on June 19, and the sale will then close 30 days later. Two other companies — Bison Minerals and Buckeye Minerals — also expressed interest in Plant 4 outside Grand Rapids, but trustee Nauni Manty wrote in a status report filed Monday that other interested companies would be working with the site’s mechanic’s lien holders and Itasca County before filing an offer by June 28. Under Magnetation, Plants 1, 2 and 4 and the Jessie Load-out facility employed more than 500 people at its peak in 2014, but closed shortly after and filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2015 as iron ore prices plummeted.
