Old International Paper equipment up for sale

Published 12:23 am Friday, August 15, 2014

NATCHEZ — Some of the last infrastructure left over from International Paper’s days of operations will soon be up for bid.

The Adams County Board of Supervisors authorized this week for County Administrator Joe Murray to declare some of the old IP equipment to be excess equipment and advertise it for sale.

The county was recently approached by parties interested in buying the large crane that was at one time used to stack logs in the lumber yard and two turbine generators from the paper mill’s power plant, Murray said.

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“The people with Rentech, when they had the property, did a lot of demolition and scrapping before they sold it (to the county),” Murray said. “That crane was so large, it probably wasn’t worth their time to take it down and dismantle it, and the generators were in a place where they were not really easy to get to.”

Murray said removing the crane will probably involve bringing in another crane to dismantle it.

Adams County Board of Supervisors President Darryl Grennell said the county had checked with Natchez Inc. to make sure the equipment wasn’t needed.

Most of the useful equipment from the property had already been sold or taken elsewhere by the time the county purchased it in 2013, Grennell said, though a set of scales for weighing heavy trucks was moved into the Natchez-Adams County Port’s inventory.

“The warehouses that are still there we definitely want to keep, and the water treatment plant and the water wells that are on the property we want to keep,” Grennell said.

Murray said the county has in the past had a demolition company look at the IP buildings to determine if they have any scrap value, but while the buildings have steel framing, the have a brick shell that would have to be removed first.

Because the IP equipment is county property, once it is advertised for sale, those who want to purchase it will have to submit a bid. The date to submit bids has yet to be determined.