Kennametal selling equipment at closed Carbidie plant

Kennametal Inc. is turning to a virtual auction next week to sell equipment from its shuttered Carbidie plant along Arona Road in Hempfield.

A two-day auction of the plant’s equipment — such as sintering furnaces, a 120-ton press, computer-controlled and conventional machine tools, grinders and dust collectors, forklifts and various tools — will be sold at auction via webcast at BidSpotter.com.

Perfection Global LLC of Elk Grove Village, Ill., will start the auction at 10 a.m. May 19. Bidders will be able to place live bids using a desktop or mobile device and can listen to the auctioneer conduct the sale.

Jennifer Reiner, a spokesperson for the auctioneer, said Kennametal has a lot of equipment going up for bids.

The second part of the sale will start at 10 a.m. May 21.

Perfection Global is taking pre-auction offers for unidentified major assets of the plant.

Bidders can inspect the equipment that will be sold at the auction through a video tour or by making appointment to go into the plant from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. May 18.

Eric Winkelmann, a spokesman for Perfection Global, could not be reached for comment.

The company describes itself on its website as one of the world’s largestdealers in used industrial machinery and related assets. Perfection Global says it has been in business for 55 years and has “highly targeted worldwide marketing strength.”

Kennametal has used auctions in the past to sell plant equipment, said Christina Sutter, a company spokesperson.

Kennametal closed the plant at the end of last year and transferred production to a more modern facility in Rogers, Ark. The move resulted in the loss of about 60 jobs.

The plant made carbide tooling inserts, dies and other parts that improve the durability and precision of tools used in metalworking and other industries.

The closure was part of Kennametal’s ongoing restructuring to reduce costs and improve efficiency.

The company has listed the property for sale, Sutter said.

Carbidie was incorporated on July 2, 1953, in Latrobe. The founders touted the new company as “devoted exclusively to producing high-quality preformed carbide sections held to a specified tolerance, giving a delivery date and meeting it,” according to a Kennametal history of the plant published in July 2003 for its 50th anniversary.

Carbidie was acquired by Kennametal in 1997, as part of the acquisition of Greenfield Industries.

Carbidie products became the critical component of tools that manufacturers use to make a wide variety of consumer and industrial products, including razor blades, baby diapers, bandages, pharmaceuticals, soda can snap tabs, bricks, ceramic roof tiles and electrical motors, to name a few.