Though the plant is idled, its workforce of 55 remains employed while a Bankruptcy Court trustee seeks a buyer, a process expected to take six months.
"That plant's going to be taken by somebody," Rendell said in an interview last week. "It will be a fire sale, but somebody will take the plant."
Still to be determined is who will be left holding the bag for Bionol's demise: Bionol's equity investors; TD Bank N.A., which holds $131 million in loans; the buyers of the $67 million in tax-free bonds; or the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, which is owed $6.3 million in loans.
Getty Marketing's obligations also remain unclear.
Getty's contract to buy the plant's production was the foundation upon which the plant was conceived and financed. And when Getty defaulted on the contract in 2010, the die was cast for Bionol's demise.
"Getty agreed to a market price that was far too high," Rendell said, "and they got trapped in a bad deal."
Getty claimed it was defrauded by Bionol and sought to settle the dispute through arbitration.
But on July 18, a panel of the American Arbitration Association ruled that Getty had intentionally breached the contract. It awarded Bionol $230 million, the amount it projected Bionol would lose over the contract's five-year term.
"The Getty default led to a cascading series of events - the inability to make debt service, the shutdown of the plant, and the bankruptcy filing," said Anthony A. Bongiorno, a partner in the Boston office of McDermott, Will & Emery, which represents Bionol Clearfield.
The bankruptcy trustee, Alfred T. Giuliano of West Berlin, N.J., has initiated action in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware to recover the award from Getty Marketing.
But collecting the money presents challenges because Getty Marketing has changed owners.
