A senior provincial judge rendered decisions on three issues Thursday in Essar Steel Algoma's proceedings under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act .
First, Justice Geoffrey B. Morawetz, regional senior judge for Toronto region, approved a one-month extension of Essar Algoma's insolvency protection until Apr. 30.
It was the eighth such extension since the steelmaker was granted protection from its creditors on Nov. 9, 2015.
Justice Morawetz said he was satisfied the extension is reasonable under the circumstances and Essar Algoma and other parties are acting in good faith and with due diligence.
The company's last extension expired on Thursday.
As SooToday reported earlier today, Essar Algoma asked for the extension to Apr. 30 to allow it to continue making steel while participating in mediation talks in Toronto.
Second, Judge Morawetz agreed to help Algoma regain control of its web services.
Morawetz ordered New Delhi-based Net4 India, an Internet domain registrar and web hosting company, to transfer the Algoma.com registration back to the Canadian company.
The Algoma domain has always been owned by Essar Steel Algoma, but registration was moved nine years ago to a Net4 account controlled by Jayantha Prabhu, chief information officer at Essar Group.
Prabhu hasn't responded to Essar Algoma's request that he co-operate in transferring control of the domain, court was told.
All access to Essar Algoma's webmail, mobility gateway, customer portal, virtual private network and other applications goes through the Algoma.com domain.
Essar Algoma wants its web services hosted at GoDaddy instead of Net4, with the account administered by one of its own employees.
In his third decision on Thursday, Justice Morawetz refused to order Essar Algoma to resume its monthly cargo-handling payments to the Port of Algoma, preferring that the issue be decided by Justice Frank Newbould, who has been supervising Essar's Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act file.
- 00000 Wallace Terrace
- 1048 Queen Street East
- 00000 Ontario Avenue
- 150 Conmee Avenue
- 80 Hudson Street
- 00000 Portage Lake
- 73 Huron Street
- 105 West Street
- 833 Wallace Terrace
- 399 Base Line Road
- 1177 Base Line
- 00000 Base Line
- 40 Yates Avenue
- 32 Yates Avenue
In a factum filed on Tuesday, GIP's lawyers said that if Algoma doesn't immediately resume payments under the cargo-handling agreement, it wants the court's permission to deny Algoma access to the port and its facilities.
Half of Essar Steel Algoma's assets are on port lands and the facility is considered essential to the steel mill's ongoing operations.