CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – A Michigan company said Thursday it still hopes to buy automotive supplier Collins & Aikman Corp.’s plastics business, which includes three plants in Rantoul.

Collins & Aikman lawyers told a U.S. Bankruptcy judge in Detroit on Thursday that Troy, Mich.-based Cadence Innovation LLC had “disengaged” from negotiations to buy the business, Collins & Aikman spokesman David Youngman said.

That news, which Cadence learned from the Web site of trade publication Automotive News, caught the company off guard, Cadence spokesman Russell Chick said.

“That’s not at all the case,” Chick said. “We still are engaged.”

Collins & Aikman also is talking with other potential buyers, Youngman said, but added that the company looks “forward to resuming negotiations (with Cadence) as quickly as possible.” He declined to name the other potential buyers.

Cadence and Collins & Aikman announced a tentative deal in April but in June said they’d restarted negotiations. Neither spokesman would say when the companies last spoke.

The back-and-forth leaves Rantoul and the roughly 500 people who work at the plants hoping for the best but preparing for something else, town Economic Development Director Robert Bruce said.

On the one hand, Southfield, Mich.-based Collins & Aikman told the town by mail July 3 that it didn’t expect to sell the local plants and planned to close them, laying off the employees. The company says 60 people have lost jobs since then as clients take business elsewhere.

On the other, at least the companies say publicly that they’re still going to talk, Bruce said.

“Unfortunately, in many ways, we’re on the outside looking in,” he said.

Collins & Aikman filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2005. It was one of several auto parts makers to file in recent years as U.S. automakers lost market share and cut production.

The bankruptcy judge on Thursday confirmed Collins & Aikman’s Chapter 11 plan, which will allow it to exit bankruptcy proceedings.