According to documents filed in court by the trustee PricewaterhouseCoopers, the Australian company has so far been unable to obtain the insurance cover necessary to protect the plant and equipment.
The lease for the Cap-Chat plant should have been signed on January 20 for a resumption of activities in February.
The Australian company, however, paid $ 300,000 of the $ 500,000 non-refundable amount provided for in the agreement signed in December. This money is currently used by the trustee for the management and conservation of the assets.
Currently, five employees are still employed by Technologies Orbite in order to preserve the Cap-Chat facilities.
Proceedings against Orbite, which filed for protection under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act in the spring of 2017, were further stayed last week. The extension will end on March 14.
The controller of PricewaterhouseCoopers indicates that this new period will allow him to finalize the conditions of the leases to be signed with AEM HPA and to negotiate a plan of arrangement or an offer to purchase. In the meantime, the buyer should have received quotes from potential insurers.
Without insurance coverage, the conclusion of an agreement between the potential buyer and the trustee could be understood.
In its latest report, PricewaterhouseCoopers does not plan to pay the rent for the Laval laboratory in February.
The documents filed in court last December by the controller responsible for the file at PricewaterhouseCoopers also reported a debt of more than $ 170,000 to the property insurer of Technologies Orbite. The invoice had not been paid due to insufficient funds.
Technologies Orbite owes $ 53 million, of which $ 30 million is held by secured creditors including Investissement Qubec and Developpement conomique Canada, but also investment firms like MidCap Financial ($ six million) or Computareshares ($ 14 million).
Plan B
A group of Orbite shareholders are still working on a recovery plan.
Its members mandated, last week, the engineering firm Seneca to carry out an evaluation of the economic viability of Orbite as well as an analysis of possible solutions to produce industrially high purity alumina according to the process patented by Orbite .
The study should be available within a month. The group, which has collected 365 shareholder proxies representing 32 million shares, intends to use these two assessments to file a business plan and finance a recovery.
Orbit Technologies Factory
Photo: Radio-Canada / Claude Ct
They want to be part of the file with or without a buyer, says group spokesman Lorenzo D'Alesio. We don't let go.
It was stated publicly and in court.
We are moving forward with our plans.
If they succeed, we will be there.
If they don't succeed, we'll be there too.
We will combine our efforts.
What they do, we do too.
One of the concerns of the group of shareholders is that Advanced Energy Minerals is using the license without exclusive right granted to it to appropriate the Orbite technology without necessarily restarting the Cap-Chat plant.
Advanced Energy Minerals is a subsidiary of the Australian private company Gulf Minerals, specialized in the production of high purity alumina. Gulf Minerals has facilities in China, Malaysia, Singapore and Australia.