The sale of the closed paper mill in Bucksport to a Canadian scrap metal recycler is complete. What’s next is uncertain.

Bill Cohen, a spokesman for Verso Paper Corp., confirmed that the sale of the former paper mill to AIM Development LLC closed Thursday. But a spokesman for AIM Development told the Portland Press Herald that the recycler “is in discussions with an operator” that would continue to make paper at the mill.

“At this point, this is all I’m able to discuss,” Walter Griesseier wrote in an email.

AIM Development is a subsidiary of American Iron and Metal, a Montreal-based scrap metal recycler. The price was roughly $60 million in cash, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Verso closed the mill in December, citing the high cost of energy and a shrinking market for the glossy paper it produced for magazines and catalogs. It laid off more than 500 employees.

A union representing nearly 60 machinists at the mill filed a lawsuit in an attempt to block the sale and open a way for a buyer that would keep the mill operating, but a federal judge denied the request earlierthis month.

In the course of the proceedings, Herb Black, the owner of AIM, suggested he was open to selling the mill to a paper manufacturer as long as he could make a profit.

Reached on his cellphone Friday afternoon, Black said he wouldn’t be available to comment on the sale of the Bucksport mill until Tuesday because he was in Arizona at the Super Bowl.

Rosaire Pelletier, Gov. Paul LePage’s senior forest products adviser, said he has reached out to AIM in an attempt to facilitate a sale of the mill to another paper producer.

“There is ongoing discussions to work with AIM to try and get some groups together to look at the paper side of the business,” Pelletier said Friday, though he admitted he’s unsure of the prospects.

“We don’t really know what (Herb Black) wants to do. That’s the problem.”

LePage has criticized the sale. Last week, he called the Verso executives “bottom feeders” and said they should leave the state.

Although he and Pelletier said they had heard from other prospective bidders interested in buying the mill from Verso and continuing it as a paper-making operation, they received no response from Verso executives.

LePage and Pelletier submitted letters to Judge John A. Woodcock Jr., who presided over the union lawsuit, but the judge said the union had not “met (its) burden to prove” Verso had violated federal antitrust laws with its agreement to sell the mill to AIM Development.

Cohen, the Verso spokesman, said workers should receive their severance pay next week.