Kaiser ready to exit Chapter 11

Kaiser Aluminum Corp. plans to end its four-year bankruptcy on July 6 and exit Chapter 11 protection with a clean balance sheet and high expectations.

Once the third-largest aluminum company in the United States, the new Kaiser is far smaller that the global firm it had become.

As part of its emergence from bankruptcy, Kaiser will operate with a new board of directors whose members are being appointed by the company and by the United Steelworkers of America. That union had a huge claim against the company and represents employees in its factories.

The emergence also will make official the end of controversial Houston financier Charles Hurwitz’s ownership of Kaiser. The company’s common stock will be rendered worthless. Instead, the company will issue new shares and owners will include special trusts set up to benefit current and former workers.

Prospects that Kaiser will be successful were buoyed by a profitable first three months of the year.

The company, which moved its headquarters from Houston to Foothills Ranch, Calif., a community in the greater Los Angeles area, recorded net income of $38.4 million from January through March.

The Trentwood rolling mill is the company’s main asset and is the recipient of about $75 million in new equipment to produce high-grade plate for aerospace customers Boeing Co. and Airbus.

Kaiser sold its bauxite mines, alumina refineries and aluminum smelters to repay creditors in the bankruptcy. The company’s last major smelting property is the Angelsey smelter in Wales.

The firm shuttered its Mead smelter during the energy crisis of 2000, choosing to sell its allotment of megawatts generated at federal dams on the Columbia River. The decision netted Kaiser $460 million, much of which was reportedly spent on its alumina refinery in Gramercy, La., which was later sold as part of the bankruptcy.

Kaiser filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2002. It listed assets of $3.3 billion and liabilities of $3.1 billion and said at the time that poor metal prices and looming debt payments made normal operations impossible.