Tri-City Made

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Thursday, October 29, 2015

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Tri-City Herald

TRI-CITY MADE

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TRI-CITY MADE

Tri-City Herald •

Thursday, October 29, 2015

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ECONOMIC HEALTH

Manufacturing critical now, in future

Sarah Gordon Tri-City Herald

Western Sintering employee Sabre Grisby of Kennewick takes powder metal parts off the press at the contract manufacturer’s facilities in Richland.

KRISTI PIHL TRI-CITY HERALD

Circuit boards, cancer treatments, nuclear fuel, rifle scopes and mammoth cranes don’t seem to have much in common.

But in the Tri-Cities, they do. Those are all products area manufacturers make and sell to companies around the world.

The Tri-Cities has a healthy, growing manufacturing industry that accounts for about 7 percent of all area jobs and wages. But this critical piece of the economy is somewhat hidden, overshadowed by Hanford.

Manufacturing is the part of the economy that local officials hope to continue to grow as the Tri-Cities works to better prepare for the eventual end to Hanford cleanup activities.

But what we have already is more diverse than many realize. The TriCities is home to quite a few food and beverage manufacturers, but local companies make so much more than french fries and wine.

For example, Areva’s Richland plant produces nuclear fuel that supplies about 5 percent of U.S. electricity. The company sells the fuel to nuclear power plant operators.

About 1,000 national and international cancer patients a year receive direct radiation treatment from seeds containing the radioactive isotope Cesium-131 made by Richland’s IsoRay Medical. A single titanium seed is the length of a piece of rice and thin as pencil lead.

And Kennewick’s Manufacturing See CRITICAL | Page 4

INSIDE Cadwell Laboratories .......................................7 SIGN Manufacturing Inc...................................9 Carbitex...........................................................12 IsoRay Medical................................................14 Lampson International ....................................17 Manufacturing Services Inc. .........................20 Areva ..............................................................22 Western Sintering ..........................................24 Chukar Cherries.............................................26

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TRI-CITY MADE

Tri-City Herald

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CRITICAL | Manufacturing can also bring in tourism, and not just through wineries FROM PAGE 3

Services builds circuit boards for companies that manufacture medical, military, wireless communications and other products.

“No matter what we do, we need manufacturing, and we can either pay someone else to do it, or do it ourselves,” said Patric Sazama, Impact Washington’s regional project director for Eastern Washington.

Jobs tend to pay better The Tri-Cities has seen manufacturing grow overall during the past two decades. New companies have opened up shop, outside companies have moved in and existing companies have expanded.

Take Pasco-based TiLite, a custom manual wheelchair manufacturer. It has grown from 15 to more than 230 employees and expanded from the Port of Kennewick’s Oak Street Industrial Park to its own manufacturing facility during the past two decades.

TiLite made more than 15,000 customized manual wheelchairs for U.S. and international customers last year.

The company, which was sold to Swedish power wheelchair manufacturer Permobil last year, plans to continue to grow.

And they aren’t the only ones.

Overall, the average number of TriCity manufacturing jobs has gone from about 5,000 in 1993 to more than 7,300 in 2013, according to data from the state Employment Security Department.

Food and beverage manufacturing

dominate, at an average of 3,750 food manufacturing jobs and 1,300 beverage manufacturing jobs in 2013.

Tri-Citians also work in fabricated metal, machinery, electronics, chemical, wood and other types of manufacturing.

Total manufacturing wages increased each year during the last eight years. That happened despite the recession and layoffs with the closures of J.R. Simplot Co.’s Pasco plant in 2008, Prosser’s ConAgra Foods Lamb Weston plant in 2010, and Parsons Technology Development and Fabrication Complex in Pasco in 2012.

Tri-Citians working in manufacturing earned about $338.3 million in 2013, up 3 percent from the previous year.

An average Tri-City manufacturing worker earned $46,100 a year in 2013, about $1,000 more than the average Tri-City worker for all industries.

Advances in technology and automation mean that fewer people are needed to do the same amount of work, but those jobs tend to pay better because they require more skill.

Ripple effect through the economy The Tri-Cities may already have a strong industrial base, but local leaders want more.

Kennewick’s efforts to expand the city’s urban growth area south of Interstate 82 and west of Highway 395 stem from a desire to have more industrial land to offer to large manufacturers.

Bob Brawdy Tri-City Herald

See CRITICAL | Page 5

Sue Knisley, an employee of Manufacturing Services in Kennewick, works on assembling a circuit board by hand.

Tri-City manufacturing by the numbers Total firms

Total jobs

Total wages

Average wage

235 43 62 8 23

7,337 3,754 1,267 193 167

$338,284,696 $154,342,804 $40,202,591 $11,174,562 $6,662,871

$46,106.68 $41,114.23 $31,730.54 $57,899.28 $39,897.43

11 8 10 8 4 4

66 66 62 33 22 23

$1,570,058 $2,084,475 $2,950,775 $937,310 $1,148,327 $1,058,312

$23,788.76 $31,582.95 $47,593.15 $28,403.33 $52,196.68 $46,013.57

All industries All manufacturing Food Beverage Electronics Fabricated metal Nonmetallic mineral Printing Wood Machinery Furniture Chemical Plastics/rubber

— 2013 data from the state Employment Security Department

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TRI-CITY MADE

Tri-City Herald •

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CRITICAL | FROM PAGE 4

Local efforts to get some of Hanford’s land for economic development also aim to bring in manufacturers in the energy sector.

The Tri-Cities Research District in north Richland is home to some manufacturers already and aims for even more.

Economic development efforts have historically focused on manufacturing, since the jobs tend to pay better and it’s a way to keep outside money flowing into the community, said Gary Ballew, the Port of Pasco’s director of economic development and marketing. Manufacturers are selling their goods and services around the nation and world.

But it’s also something communities can impact, he said. Manufacturers that are growing tend to look for expansion opportunities, and savvy communities can market themselves to bring that business in.

Manufacturers have a ripple effect through the local economy because of their need for supplies, which can create business for other area companies, Sazama said. They also help support a need for more retail and service industry jobs.

Manufacturing also can bring in tourists. Wineries are a good example, but people also will visit food manufacturers, especially if they can get a sneak peek into the process, said Gary White, the Tri-City Development Council’s director of business retention and expansion.

Manufacturing is where future jobs are at, especially those in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, fields, Ballew said. There aren’t enough of those skilled workers.

A huge investment While the desire is there, recruiting manufacturers is a tough task. It takes a lot of time to see a project come to fruition.

“It’s a huge investment for a manufacturer to build in a new community,” said Terry Walsh, Kennewick’s executive director of employee and community relations.

For example, attracting food processors to the Pasco Processing Center took a lot of time, Ballew said. The Port of Pasco sold the last large piece of land in the 250-acre park off Highway 395 in 2013, about 20 years after the center’s first business opened.

For now, TRIDEC is honing in on trying to market the Tri-Cities as a hub

Bob Brawdy Tri-City Herald

Michael Hansen, an IsoRay Medical hot cell technician, manipulates the remote arms extending into the lead-lined cell where chemicals and other materials are used in the process to make Cesium-131 Brachytherapy Seeds that are used to treat cancer.

for food and beverage manufacturers, focusing on the region’s strengths.

White is preaching the “Columbia Basin gospel” as being the place to be for food and beverage manufacturers.

The Tri-Cities already has a cluster of such manufacturers and the infrastructure to support them, he said.

But that doesn’t lessen community leaders’ desires to see other types of manufacturers move to and grow in the Tri-Cities.

The Tri-Cities does have some advantages local officials sing as they try to draw in new companies.

Available land at reasonable prices, low power costs and highly skilled workers rank high on that list, said Diahann Howard, the Port of Benton’s director of economic development and governmental affairs. The cost of doing business and cost of living for workers also is low.

The Tri-Cities is easy to access by water, rail and highways, she said. It’s also close to Portland, Spokane and Seattle.

And companies also have a chance to partner with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Washington State University Tri-Cities, Howard said.

That’s key since manufacturing also is a path to developing new technologies.

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TRI-CITY MADE

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Photos by Andrew Jansen Tri-City Herald

Hung Nguyen of Richland installs a circuit board in a Cadwell Sierra Wave at Cadwell Laboratories in Kennewick.

Cadwell Laboratories helps diagnose Kennewick company’s medical instruments reach worldwide KRISTI PIHL TRI-CITY HERALD

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f you suffer from sleep apnea, epilepsy or nerve damage, your doctor could be using diagnostic equipment made in Kennewick to help you.

For 35 years, Cadwell Laboratories has been making medical instruments for doctors, surgeons and researchers worldwide.

It all started when John Cadwell designed the first microprocessorcontrolled electromyograph, or EMG. He was a University of Washington residency medical student at the time.

The technology made it more accurate to measure the response of stimulated nerves and muscles to try to determine if there is damage.

John Cadwell and his brother Carl

then started the company in 1979 to make and sell the device.

Since then, the Kennewick manufacturer has expanded production of medical diagnostic equipment for neurophysiology to study the brain and nervous system.

Cadwell’s Lori Kaufman said the technology has drastically changed during the years, but their philosophy remains focused on taking care of customers and patients.

Cadwell Laboratories has patented inventions, including magnetic stimulators, database designs, cable shielding designs and neural network analysis of electroencephalographs, or EEGs. EEGs are a method for tracking and recording brain wave patterns to help See CADWELL | Page 8

Don Brown of Kennewick runs tests on a circuit board before it is installed in a machine at Cadwell Laboratories in Kennewick.

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Tri-City Herald

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CADWELL | Products it uses to create its equipment entirely made in United States FROM PAGE 7

doctors spot abnormalities.

Surface electrodes or needles send electrical signals through the nerves and muscles to measure the response and find any problems, Kaufman said.

The company is always looking for new ways to improve its current equipment and for new ideas worth developing.

For example, monitoring equipment that doctors send home with possible epilepsy patients includes a video camera that can record them even when they are sleeping in a dark room.

The video and data collected over 72 hours will help the doctor track seizures.

The company also makes equipment for at-home sleep studies.

Patients who use the ApneaTrak device put sensors on before sleeping that will record breathing, snoring, pulse rate and other data. The 4-ounce recorder was a built in way to make sure all of sensors are correctly connected.

Most of the products Cadwell uses in its manufacturing processes are from the U.S. The circuit boards are made

by Manufacturing Services of Kennewick.

And all the final assembly is done by Cadwell employees. Software for the various devices also is designed at Cadwell.

Cadwell has about 110 employees at its Kennewick headquarters.

A team of about 20 U.S.-based field representatives sell the equipment to U.S. physicians, clinics, hospitals and laboratories. And a network of distributors sell Cadwell products overseas.

Their new focus is on growing their international business.

Cadwell recently opened offices in China, Singapore and the Netherlands to start with. At least half of the growth potential Cadwell sees is in international use of its products, said Kaufman.

“It’s going quite well,” she said.

Amos Martin, the company’s manufacturing engineer, has worked on reorganizing the manufacturing portion of Cadwell Laboratories to streamline production.

That keeps the production of one type of equipment in the same area and provides an easy way for employees to tell when stock is getting low for current orders.

Almost all of the diagnostic equip-

Andrew Jansen Tri-City Herald

Don Brown of Kennewick runs tests on a circuit board before it is installed in a machine at Cadwell Laboratories in Kennewick.

ment comes with computers programed by Cadwell employees specifically for that product. That way when the equipment arrives, it is ready to use.

Cadwell also provides maintenance services for its equipment. Trained

service techs offer preventative maintenance at the Kennewick headquarters.

Customers also are able to borrow equipment during repairs so they do not have to take a break from performing procedures.

The company’s goal is to ship out newly ordered equipment with 48 hours, instead of the two to three weeks that doctors often wait when ordering from other companies, Kaufman said. Cadwell ships an average of 130 packages a day.

TRI-CITY MADE

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Tri-City Herald •

Thursday, October 29, 2015

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Andrew Jansen Tri-City Herald

Richard Grizzell, operations manager for SIGN Fracture Care International, demonstrates how one of the nails it makes is inserted into a broken bone at the Richland facility.

Richland’s SIGN creates implants to heal the world Company had its beginnings in a garage KRISTI PIHL TRI-CITY HERALD

T

he minds behind SIGN Fracture Care International of Richland found a better way to treat fractures of the tibia and other bones.

But instead of cashing in on the stainless steel nails it manufactures, the Richland company gives much of what it makes away to hospitals in developing countries.

SIGN’s nonprofit status and mission make it unique among Tri-City manufacturers. Giving the implants away is simply the right thing to do, said Dr.

Lewis Zirkle, the founder and president.

The company had its beginnings in Zirkle’s garage, but became a nonprofit 16 years ago and employs 35 people.

SIGN surgeons around the world repaired fractured bones in about 18,000 operations using the nonprofit’s tools and nails last year, said CEO Jeanne Dillner. The implants have been used in about 150,000 surgeries since 1999.

All of the nails and screws, and most of the tools that make the surgeries possible, are made at the nonprofit’s Richland facility. It has expanded its See SIGN | Page 10

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Andrew Jansen Tri-City Herald

Above: Lana Grieb of Walla Walla checks the condition of the slots in the nail at SIGN Fracture Care International in Richland. Below: Richard Grizzell, operations manager for SIGN Fracture Care International, explains how the stainless steel rods are brought into the Richland facility and inspected before being used in the process to make its products.

SIGN | Company, a nonprofit, gives away its products to hospitals across globe FROM PAGE 9

manufacturing capacity — the goal is to make 27,000 nails this year, said Richard Grizzell, operations manager.

Those nails are needed not only to create sets for surgeons newly trained to use SIGN’s equipment, but also to restock the supplies available to surgeons at partner hospitals.

“They should always have a good selection available,” he said.

A SIGN nail starts out as a solid, 12-foot long bar of stainless steel. The steel is an implantable grade, made with a specific tensile strength and metal mix.

The nails can be made in under five minutes, much faster than the 15 to 16 minutes it used to take before SIGN upgraded to a new machine. The software and the additional tools that can be loaded into the new screw machine

help cut that time down, Grizzell said.

Workers place the 12-foot bars into a feeder attached to the machine, and inspect the nails once they are finished to make sure they meet SIGN’s specifications.

The nails are then ultrasonically cleaned, buffed, cleaned again and bent.

A hydraulic press is used to bend the nails to the angle needed for them to work for the implant surgery, Grizzell said. The machine holds the nail at that angle for some time, so when the machine releases it, the angle remains.

For a while, a volunteer would hand crank a machine to press the nails into the right shape, Grizzell said. But about four years ago, SIGN was able to add the hydraulic press and eliminate the need for human muscle strength.

The nails are then smoothed and See SIGN | Page 11

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SIGN | Hospitals can install without X-rays FROM PAGE 10

laser marked with SIGN’s logo, the size of the nail and the job number.

Two machines are dedicated to making the sizes of screws used to hold the implantable nails in place. They are programmed to make the specific screws needed, which are then cleaned and smoothed.

It takes four minutes on average to make a screw, Grizzell said. They could not be made by hand.

Human eyes and an electronic optical vision system are used to inspect finished nails and screws. Once through inspection, the nails and screws go through a final cleaning. After that, no human hands touch them while they are packaged, inventoried and shipped.

SIGN tries to keep more than 6,000 nails and about 15,000 screws on hand to fill orders from partner hospitals, Grizzell said. During one week this spring, some of the outgoing supplies and equipment was headed for hospitals in Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, Haiti, Vietnam, Pakistan and Uganda.

When finished, the nails look fairly

simple, a solid piece of metal with holes and slots, bent into a slight angle. The diameter ranges from 8 millimeters to 12, in 1-millimeter increments. Lengths range from 220 millimeters up to 420, in 20-millimeter increments.

One of the most commonly used nails is 9 millimeters in diameter and 320 millimeters long, Grizzell said.

SIGN also makes a pediatric nail. It has a smaller diameter and one interlocking slot farther down from the tip of the nail to avoid impacting the growth area of the bone, Dillner said.

The nail wedges inside the canal of the bone, holding the bone in the position it needs to be in so the fracture can heal, Grizzell said.

The nails do need to be removed from children once healing is complete, but can be left in adults, he said. Adults often want them removed for cultural reasons.

SIGN also makes most of the surgical instruments needed to perform the surgery, including the slot finder that allows surgeons to do the implant surgery without the use of an X-ray machine, Grizzell said. That tool is used to

Andrew Jansen Tri-City Herald

Britt Robinson inspects a tool that is used to remove a nail from the bone at SIGN Fracture Care International in Richland.

find the slot in the nail so that the screw can be placed through the slot and into the bone.

Hospitals will take an X-ray before surgery and several days afterward, but they don’t need to have a real-time X-ray machine available during the surgery, Zirkle said.

There are some products needed for

the surgeries that SIGN does outsource.

For-profit companies had tried to do what Zirkle and others managed to accomplish with SIGN, Dillner said.

They were lucky that what they tried ended up working as intended.

“We figured out how to solve the problem, and instead of making a profit on it, we just give it away,” Dillner said.

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Bob Brawdy Tri-City Herald

Junus Khan, founder and CEO of Carbitex, models a pair of limited edition tennis shoes containing carbon fiber materials from his Kennewick company. The shoes were commissioned

by General Electric to reinvent the moon boot with super materials to celebrate the anniversary of NASA’s first lunar landing. Other products made with the carbon fiber cloth are also displayed.

FROM FIRM FIBER TO FANCY FABRIC Kennewick company Carbitex’s material is stronger than steel and sold across the world KRISTI PIHL TRI-CITY HERALD

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uggage, shoes and stereo covers made from carbon fiber fabric were only a dream until a few years ago.

That is, until Junus Khan discovered a way to create material that would stand up to the standards and strength needed for consumer goods like luggage.

Now, Carbitex, the company the Kennewick man started in February 2012, makes carbon fiber fabric for customers worldwide.

Carbon is stronger than steel and aluminum pound for pound, Khan said.

But carbon can’t be dyed like a cotton

fabric. It is always black. Carbitex uses a special coating to tint the black carbon fiber material with different colors.

TiLite, the Pasco-based manual wheelchair manufacturer, is a local company using Carbitex’s fabric.

New Jersey manufacturer Tumi launched its luggage line featuring Carbitex’s fabric in fall 2014. The soft, flexible Cx6 material is co-branded on the luxury Tumi luggage.

And when General Electric decided to remake the moon boot to celebrate the 45th anniversary of the first moon walk, the company decided to use Carbitex’s fabric. The boots Neil Armstrong and his fellow astronauts wore when they walked the moon on July 20, 1969 were made out of General Electric

silicon rubber.

Only about 100 pairs of the limitededition Mission sneakers were made, and they were sold online for $196.90, to commemorate the year of the first moon walk. Now, a pair goes for quite a bit more, Khan said.

He has a pair himself, but he’s worn them less than a handful of times and never to actually walk outside.

“It’s been exciting and fun and definitely without a doubt a team effort,” Khan said.

Demand for his unique fabric has prompted him to add employees, going from a handful to more than 14 in 2014.

It also means his company is using more space in one of the Port of Kennewick’s Oak Street development buildings.

“We are in the process of scaling up again,” Khan said.

Khan, 31, a New Jersey native, had

always wanted to start his own business. He studied economics at Rutgers University in New Jersey, and began working for an events company.

He worked on a business plan for launch events for the high-end automotive industry. After turning that effort into a reality, he decided he wanted to work in the automotive industry instead.

He conceived the idea for Carbitex before he started working as a consultant for Koenigsegg, a high-end, wellrespected Swedish manufacturer of supercars. While living in Kennewick, he helped the company set up sales infrastructure and create a sales and marketing plan for North America.

Khan saw a demand for carbon fiber in consumer products. The military and aerospace and automotive industries See FABRIC | Page 13

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FABRIC | Texture, pattern can be different FROM PAGE 12

already were using it. But he thought it could be more versatile.

At first, he thought about creating something out of carbon fiber material, but he couldn’t find anyone to produce that fabric for him in 2010.

Khan had found his niche.

He did some research on his own and came up with a method he thought would work. Through Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s technology assistance program, Khan was able to use the lab’s equipment to prove his method by running some tests.

Carbitex started manufacturing carbon fiber fabric in August 2012 to fulfill an order by JBL, an electronics company owned by Harman International, Khan said.

JBL wanted to make high-end speakers appear more modern with the use of carbon fiber. They gave Khan only about two months to deliver the desired fabric.

That was a steep task — at the time, Khan was still operating the company out of his garage.

Some of how Carbitex makes its carbon fiber fabric is a trade secret and some of the processes and the materials await patents. The company designed its own machines.

“It’s not going to be easy for someone to copy what we are doing,” he said.

Carbitex buys raw carbon fiber, woven in different patterns, which is delivered on rolls.

Texture and the pattern of the carbon material can be different. Carbitex can weave the carbon fiber in different patterns, create different ranges of flexibility and add sheen.

In general, carbon fiber goes through somewhere between two to seven processes in Carbitex’s manufacturing facility. Specialized forms of coating, impregnation and lamination are used, and sometimes heat as well.

The company tests samples of its materials in a lab as new materials are developed and as a quality control check when producing fabric for specific customers.

Customers may want a certain look and feel, but they also may want the fabric to be difficult to scratch and to

Bob Brawdy Tri-City Herald

Strips of soft carbon fiber material are tested for durability in a flex testing machine at Carbitex in Kennewick. The programable testing machine counts down each oscillation to help determine any measurable wear patterns.

stand up well to wear and tear, said Kevin Simmons, the company’s vice president of engineering.

So Carbitex uses different machines to see how much pressure is required to scratch the fabric and how much movement can happen before the fabric begins to wear down and form a hole, Simmons said.

For example, with the bally flex tester, a sample of the fabric is folded, and the machine moves the fold up and down as it gently rocks.

They use the specifications requested by their customers to determine how to process the carbon fiber, Khan said.

“We engineer this material for the application,” he said.

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IsoRay Medical employee Brian Jensen uses a pair of tweezers to pick up the titanium components used to make Cesium-131 Brachytherapy Seeds that are used to treat cancer. The seeds, which look like a piece of pencil lead, send high amounts of radiation to a small location

IsoRay Medical inspired by Hanford Radioactive seeds treat about 1,000 patients each year KRISTI PIHL TRI-CITY HERALD

I

soRay Medical is always in a time crunch.

The cesium-131 radioactive isotope that the Richland manufacturer uses to make a cancer treatment decays so quickly that the radioactive seeds typically are made and shipped the same day.

The seeds have to be precisely created and delivered so that they will transmit the correct therapeutic dose of radiation when a surgeon implants them into waiting cancer patients.

Each titanium seed is no longer than a grain of rice and as thin as pencil lead. But inside, cesium-131 is waiting to deliver high, targeted doses of radiation See ISORAY | Page 15

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ISORAY | Company sprang from trying to handle byproducts from Hanford waste FROM PAGE 14

to defeat cancer cells while sparing healthy tissue and organs.

IsoRay Medical was created to take a spinoff technology from Hanford from an idea to actual production. After receiving U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval, the University of Washington first used the seeds to treat a prostate cancer patient in 2004.

Now, the radioactive seeds are used to treat about 1,000 patients around the world each year.

Chemist Lane Bray, one of the publicly traded company’s founders, and other Pacific Northwest National Laboratory scientists had been tackling how to deal with cesium-137, a byproduct of the fission process Hanford used to create nuclear fuel, said Bill Cavanagh, the company’s vice president of research and development.

That isotope of the element has a halflife of 30 years, and its slow decay was a monstrous problem for Hanford cleanup.

Clay O’Laughlin, the radioisotopes and facilities manager for IsoRay Medical in Richland, holds up an inert demonstration sample of a bioabsorbable mesh with Cesium-131 Brachytherapy Seeds woven into the material that is implanted into patients being treated for cancer.

See ISORAY | Page 16

Bob Brawdy Tri-City Herald

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ISORAY | Research hospitals, medical centers use seeds to target, destroy cancers FROM PAGE 15

Attempts to isolate cesium-137 led Bray to discover his patented chemical process to separate cesium-131 from a mix of other radioactive isotopes.

Cesium-131 had been identified as an ideal isotope for brachytherapy more than 50 years ago, in part because of its short halflife of 10 days.

Bray was the first to find a costeffective way to produce a pure form of the isotope. So far, IsoRay Medical is the only company in the world producing cesium-131 seeds.

“You go from a nuclear weapons complex to curing cancer,” said Clay O’Laughlin, the company’s radioisotopes and facilities manager.

IsoRay Medical started out at PNNL, moved offsite to a single room and then opened its Richland manufacturing facility in 2007.

Each set of radioactive seeds is made to order for a specific patient, Cavanagh said. The dosage is determined based on the doctor’s prescription.

Typically, about 40 to 120 seeds are needed per patient.

IsoRay Medical manufactures the entire seed. In the “cold” or nonradioactive lab, workers weld a cap onto one end of each titanium seed, using a camera to magnify it.

A tiny gold bar is inserted inside the seed so the seed can be seen in an ultrasound, O’Laughlin said.

Central to IsoRay Medical is the complicated, patented chemistry Lane developed to separate the desired cesium-131 from a host of nasty, dangerous radioactive materials.

The chemistry has to be done inside a “hot” cell because of how radioactive the material is. It’s kind of like an airlock in space, but instead of keeping breathable air in, the 90,000 pounds of lead keeps the radiation from escaping, O’Laughlin said.

Even the yellowish window that allows the hot cell technician to see what he or she is doing has 14¾ inches of lead and glass.

A hot cell technician directs a robotic arm to perform the chemistry to separate the cesium-131. It takes a high level of skill to manipulate the robotic arm to work with glass instruments, he said.

Once the cesium-131 is separated, it moves to a glove box that protects workers while they insert the isotope into the titanium seeds. The seeds also must be welded shut in the glove box using a laser welding technology the

Bob Brawdy Tri-City Herald

IsoRay Medical employees Joann Morden, left, and Brian Jensen weld together a titanium cap and tube, about the size of pencil lead, before the radioactive material is inserted into the “seeds” being used to treat cancer.

company developed.

The seals of each seed are checked inside a fume hood enclosure. An ultrasonic cleaning method is used to sterilize the outer surface and check the seal.

All of the finished seeds go through a number of checks before they are packaged in the specific configuration ordered by the doctor and then shipped.

Some doctors order only the seeds.

Some are loaded into needles, onto soluble thread or in Mick cartridges that act almost like a box magazine for a handgun. Others are inserted within a biodegradable weave that can be placed near the cancer during surgery.

However IsoRay Medical prepares the seeds for the medical procedures, they have to be shielded with lead so no radiation escapes until the seeds are implanted into a patient.

In addition to the seeds, IsoRay Medical also makes a GliaSite brain catheter — a balloon used to treat brain cancers. It can be used to deliver radiation using cesium-131 or another isotope. The company also sells a liquid cesium-131 called Cesitrex.

IsoRay Medical has about 30 employees at its Richland manufacturing facility, which operates at about 20 percent of its capacity.

The seeds are used by research hos-

pitals and large medical centers around the world, including Seattle and Olympia.

The appeal of cesium-131 is that it delivers a staggeringly high dose of radiation to only a few millimeters of tissue, Cavanagh said.

“The idea is to take the cancer out and then dissipate so you are not harming healthy tissue,” O’Laughlin said.

The patient receives the full dose of radiation within a month, Cavanagh said.

The cost of the radiation seeds is a fraction of what patients and their medical insurance companies pay for external beam radiation therapy, Cavanagh said. For example, with prostate cancer, it may cost about $7,000 for radiation treatment using the company’s seeds and up to $50,000 for external beam radiation therapy. Insurance companies cover IsoRay Medical’s cancer treatment.

IsoRay Medical reconnected this year with Chuck Moore of Soap Lake, who was the first to be treated for cancer using the company’s radioactive seeds, around the 10-year anniversary of his surgery.

Moore, who will be 85 in July, said the seeds did exactly what they were supposed to — they banished his prostate cancer. He’s been doing so well

that his doctor is no longer doing an annual blood test to check for signs of returning cancer.

He was diagnosed early and took several months to research options and talk to others who had gone through various cancer treatments. Moore had his oncologist delay treatment just a bit so that he could use the cesium-131 seeds, he said.

“If I had to do it all over again I would make the same decision,” he said.

IsoRay Medical started out focusing on prostate cancer, but has expanded to include brain, lung, gynecological cancers and more, Cavanagh said. The seeds have been approved to use on any cancer.

The seeds were used to treat a 7year-old girl this year in Peru who had an inoperable brain tumor that had partially paralyzed her, Cavanagh said.

Dr. Carlos Alvarez Peña of Lima carefully placed three seeds into the tumor last year. Scans showed the tumor had shrunk within a few weeks.

Nine months later, the tumor was dormant and 70 percent smaller, Cavanagh said. The girl was able to walk again days after the seeds were implanted.

“We get to do something that matters,” O’Laughlin said.

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Kate Lampson, Lampson International’s public relations and communications director, stands near some of the company’s cranes currently set up at their Pasco shop.

Bob Brawdy Tri-City Herald

MODERN-DAY MAMMOTHS Lampson International began with 1 workhorse crane; employs 300 worldwide, but still family owned, operated KRISTI PIHL TRI-CITY HERALD

T

he orange and white boom of Lampson International’s largestever crane has become part of the Tri-City skyline.

The Lampson Transi-Lift 3000 is a startling 560 feet tall and can lift around 6 million pounds without breaking a sweat. Workers finished building it spring 2014 at the Kennewick-based company’s Pasco manufacturing and repair facility, where it sits today.

The crane was sold to Japanese company Hitachi.

It’s the latest, greatest crane based on a spark of inspiration by Lampson International’s founder, Neil Lampson.

After working on many job sites, he came up with the idea of marrying

together two Manitowoc crawler cranes and worked with engineer Walt Trask to make the idea a reality in the late 1970s.

Lampson International didn’t start out as a manufacturer. Neil Lampson and his wife, Billie Jane Lampson, began with a small crane and hauling business dubbed Neil F. Lampson Inc. in 1946.

Today, that business, with offices in Canada and Australia and about 300 employees worldwide, remains family owned and operated. Neil and Billie Jane’s son, Bill Lampson, has been the company’s president for the past 25 years. He is training two of his children, Peter and Kate Lampson, to follow in his footsteps.

See LAMPSON | Page 18

WWW.LAMPSONCRANE.COM

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Photos by Bob Brawdy Tri-City Herald

Above: Lampson International employee Tom Strycula works on a large vertical milling machine in the company’s machine shop in Kennewick. Below: Sean Markussen, a Lampson International employee, works inside the painted cab of the company’s new Millennium crane being assembled at the company’s manufacturing shop in Pasco.

LAMPSON | Children: We’re still learning FROM PAGE 17

“Peter and I still have a ton to learn,” said Kate, the company’s public relations and communications director.

“This business is so complex and so detailed, and there is so much liability and risk, that you really have to eat, breath and sleep it.”

Lampson International continues to rent out cranes and transporters. But it also manufactures Transi-Lift cranes, Millennium cranes and crawler transporters, which go under a load to lift it and move on track pads instead of wheels.

Those crawler transporters are used to move the Transi-Lift cranes, but also can be used solo for heavy loads like crushers or conveyors. It takes two of them to move one Transi-Lift.

With two crawlers under the TransiLift crane, both crawlers can move simultaneously, or one can stay station-

ary and the other can move to rotate the crane, making it fairly versatile.

Transi-Lift cranes have been used to build power plants, bridges and stadiums, Kate Lampson said.

The cranes and crawlers are built and repaired in Kennewick and Pasco.

The bulk of the work those machines do is outside of the local area.

“People know us as Lampson blue, and the Transi-Lift is Big Blue,” Kate said.

The company’s equipment has been used on projects at Hanford and in Moses Lake. The company also has donated services to local nonprofit efforts, like Kennewick’s Gesa Carousel of Dreams, and used its cranes to help build the company’s Kennewick headquarters in 1980. The fourth floor of the office building is suspended using many wire ropes, just like those used on See LAMPSON | Page 19

TRI-CITY MADE

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LAMPSON | Re-manufacture main focus FROM PAGE 18

cranes.

Some of the equipment made at Lampson — like the Transi-Lift 3000 — is made on order for customers. But the rest is used in the company’s worldwide fleet and is leased out to work on mining, refinery and construction sites around the world.

Lampson International filled three orders for Transi-Lift cranes in the past seven years, which is quite a few, Kate said. A company might choose to buy a Transi-Lift for long-term use versus renting one for a short-term project.

Once a crane is rented, operating and maintaining it is up to the customer — except if the crane is a Transi-Lift.

Lampson supplies its own crew of five to operate and maintain the specialized crane.

Rentals make up the bulk of the company’s business. In addition to heavy lifting, Lampson specializes in heavy hauling and using cranes for dynamic soil compaction, where a weight is dropped.

Lampson International also has its own trucking company, Columbia Pacific Transport, which it uses to haul equipment within the U.S. Depending on the crane, it can take 80 to 100 truckloads to move once it is disassembled, Kate said.

The trucking line also moves equipment and parts between the company’s Pasco and Kennewick shops during the maintenance and manufacturing process.

Parts for the new Millennium cranes and others are made in the company’s Kennewick fabrication and machine shops, and then transported by truck to the Pasco facilities for assembly.

Some of the parts weigh so much — up to 100,000 pounds — that each workstation in the Kennewick shops has a small overhead crane to lift them.

The booms are so large that they are made and maintained in 20-foot and 40-foot sections.

Lampson International’s main focus right now is re-manufacturing Manitowoc 4100 cranes into the Lampson Millennium. The company had more than 100 of the beloved “old workhorse”

Tri-City Herald •

Manitowoc cranes in its rental fleet, but decided to update and upgrade them to be more competitive in the 21st century, Kate said. They plan to remanufacture all in their fleet.

To make a Millennium, the company replaces the operator cab completely, molding a new one out of aluminum before decking it out with a computerized control system and updated joystick controls.

The Millennium cabs are larger than the Manitowoc versions, increasing operator comfort, and the cabs have bigger glass windows, adding to visibility.

Lampson also replaces much of the housing of the crane, adding a new engine and updating the hydraulic system, she said.

And of course, the Millennium is painted blue to make it a recognizable Lampson crane.

The company started making the Millennium cranes in 2014 and has enough to do with that project to keep workers busy for the next decade, she said.

The company really only meant to use the Lampson Millenniums in their own rental fleet, she said. But they also have re-manufactured some to sell to

Thursday, October 29, 2015

Bob Brawdy Tri-City Herald

Several cranes are set up at Lampson International’s manufacturing shop facility in Pasco, including the orange and white Lampson Transi-Lift 3000 which is 560 feet tall and can lift around 6 million pounds.

customers after seeing a demand.

“Not everyone has machines like we do,” she said.

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Bob Brawdy Tri-City Herald

Khambo Sengdara, an employee at Manufacturing Services in Kennewick, uses a microscope to visually inspect completed circuit boards. The company is hired by other electronic manufacturers to do their manufacturing of various components.

Kennewick’s component creators Manufacturing Services makes circuit boards for products across world KRISTI PIHL TRI-CITY HERALD

K

ennewick’s Manufacturing Services makes the circulatory system of electronics — circuit boards.

Those circuit boards are designed and manufactured in a way to move electricity so that electronics ultimately can do what their makers intend.

Manufacturing Services doesn’t have its own product. Instead, it is a subcontractor for other companies, manufacturing the circuit boards they need, said Mike Brown, the manu-

facturer’s president and owner. The company also builds entire products for some customers.

Most of the work Manufacturing Services does is for local companies, such as Esteem Wireless Modems, Cadwell Laboratories, Bruker Elemental and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

Each circuit board is customized based on what the customer needs.

They are used in a variety of applications, including industrial, medical, military and communications.

“Every board is different, ” said Brown, whose father, Bud, started the company in 1979.

There was a time when much of the work done by Manufacturing Services was by hand. But while some dexterous workers still hand-assemble and solder circuit board, much of the work is done by machines and robotics,

directed by people.

Brown has continued to add machines to keep up with the demand he sees from other electronics manufacturers.

“We are adding every year,” he said.

“I keep thinking enough is going to be enough.”

Manufacturing Services is seeing its clients grow, and is gaining work from new clients as well. The company employs about 42 workers, with about 12 of those added in the past year.

Exactly what machines are used depends on the circuit board.

With the wave solder machine, solder will fill any holes in a circuit board. Solder is either a mix of tin and lead or a lead-free version with tin, copper and maybe some silver, Brown said. It’s used to form connections between electrical components and copper pads on a circuit board.

The copper pads are connected by copper traces.

When the circuit board comes out of the wave solder machine, the solder already has hardened. Sometimes, those circuit boards will need additional work, but even if they don’t, they still need to be cleaned.

A selective solder machine will put the solder only where it is needed.

Before getting that machine about two years ago, Brown said all of that kind of work had to be done by hand. The machine can do the same work in about 10 percent of the time while making more consistent solder joints.

The pick and place machines are programmed to place the components in the correct arrangement on a printed circuit board. The machine chooses components from preloaded containSee SERVICES | Page 21

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Bob Brawdy Tri-City Herald

Above: Mike Brown stands in the production room of Manufacturing Services, a Kennewick company that makes circuit boards and is hired by other electronics firms to manufacture them. Below: Melinda Wadsworth works on assembling circuit boards by hand.

SERVICES | Some boards built by hand FROM PAGE 20

ers that look like those that held film reels. Those components are placed on the gray solder paste on copper pads on the circuit board.

The circuit boards then are inspected before they go through an oven that heats them to 465 to 480 degrees Fahrenheit, Brown said. That melts the solder, which hardens as it cools and becomes shiny. Then the connection is finished.

Some simple boards and prototypes still are built entirely by hand, Brown said. But others already have been assembled by machines before a worker does the finishing touches.

They use machines and people to inspect each circuit board. And it’s not all saved for the end. By the time a circuit board is finished, it’s been inspected at least three times.

With the automated optical inspection machine, a worker takes a circuit

board that is known to be good and scans that into the system to be used as a baseline. The machine will make any locations where the circuit board doesn’t match the master board flash on a screen so a worker can check and see if the difference is actually a problem.

Manufacturing Services also uses an X-ray machine so workers can inspect hidden solder joints, Brown said.

Manufacturing Services processes more than 10 million mechanical components a year, working on about 80,000 assemblies, Brown said. Most of them are circuit board assemblies, but some are mechanical.

That’s a challenge, because it also means there are around 40 million chances to make a defect, since components have an average of about four solder joints.

Brown said that’s why he makes quality the top priority.

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Areva employees Ken Carpenter, left, and Lee Perez test fit components of a nuclear fuel rod assembly that will be used in a Connecticut nuclear power plant.

Bob Brawdy Tri-City Herald

Richland’s Areva fuels the nation Tri-Cities’ largest manufacturer creates nuclear fuel rods KRISTI PIHL TRI-CITY HERALD

R

ichland’s Areva is a quiet giant in electricity production.

Fuel rods made by the Tri-City area’s largest manufacturer are used to create about 5 percent of the nation’s energy.

Each rod’s diameter is slightly narrower than a dime, but is 12 to 14 feet long. And it’s made to withstand the environment of a nuclear reactor and produce energy for about six years.

Most of the Richland’s plant 700 employees are dedicated to helping make about 200,000 fuel rods a year for use in nuclear utilities in North America and the Pacific Rim. The Richland facility is one of three Areva fuel fabrication plants around the world. The other two are in France and Germany. The company also is a partner

in a number of fuel fabrication facilities.

“Areva is the largest nuclear supplier in the world,” said Ron Land, Areva senior vice president.

Richland has been home to a nuclear fuel producer for the past 45 years, but the site now belonging to Areva has been owned by more than a half-dozen companies.

Areva bought the Richland fuel fabrication facility in 2001 and started modernizing the plant. The result, Land said, is a state of the art facility on the world stage.

The Richland site includes about 40 buildings and facilities on about 47 acres. The buildings cover about 400,000 square feet.

The basic recipe for making nuclear fuel has remained about the same, but how it is done hasn’t. New technology is being used, including some developed by Richland employees through the years.

Some of that technology is considered the best practice for worldwide nuclear fuel production.

“We are very proud of our technology here,” Land said. “It is all aimed at improving safety, improving quality, reducing the impact to the environment.”

Each batch of fuel is custom made to fit the requirements of the utility that will use the fuel, Land said. In some cases, the way the fuel rods are assembled appears the same, but the levels of uranium within the fuel rods are different.

“We build all kinds of nuclear fuel,” said Barry Tilden, Richland operations manager.

Areva starts out with an enriched form of uranium called uranium hexafluoride. The uranium is enriched elsewhere and transported to the Richland facility in cylinders. Each can carry about 2.5 tons of uranium hexafluoride.

At that stage, the uranium is at such a low level of radioactivity that someone could hold it in his or her hand and be

fine, Land said.

The enriched uranium is chemically changed using a dry conversion process into a uranium dioxide powder. The dry conversion process was among those invented at the Richland site, and is better when it comes to economics, environment and safety, Land said.

The powder is pressed into pellets no more than an inch long. The pellets go through a sintering furnace for about eight hours, bringing them higher than 1,500 degrees C, holding them at that temperature, and then cooling them down. That bonds the powder together.

The pellets are loaded into the fuel rods by a machine that vibrates and shakes the pellets into the rods. Helium gas is inserted into the rods before the open end is welded shut.

The company’s high tech machine shop also makes the structural parts needed for nuclear fuel rods assemblies using computer-controlled robotics, See AREVA | Page 23

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AREVA | Uranium recovered from any scraps found and used to make more fuel FROM PAGE 22

Land said.

Among the parts made are the tie plates used on the top and bottom of fuel assemblies.

The structural materials used for the fuel rods and arrays are mostly zirconium, a strong material resistant to corrosion. It also does not absorb neutrons, a critical characteristic because conserving neutrons helps nuclear fuel utilities keep the chain reaction of fission going steadily.

Areva also makes control rods of boron or cadmium that are inserted into the fuel assemblies if a nuclear utility needs to pause the fission process. The control element assemblies absorb the neutrons that are part of the fission process.

The fuel that leaves Areva for worldwide customers is unradiated fresh fuel, which means it is still minimally radioactive.

Still, fuel is packed in a licensed shipping container and transported by truck. Containers are tested before they are used. Tests include fire, being dropped from 33 feet and being dropped onto a steel pin — each test meant to simulate possible accidents.

The nuclear utilities that buy Areva’s fuel install the fuel rod arrays into reactors. The fission process creates heat, generates steam and produces electricity.

Reactors typically operate about 18 to 24 months before a refueling outage.

Most fuel rods will be used during three cycles, since only about a third of the fuel is replaced during an outage, Land said. The rest is shuffled around.

The spent fuel that has undergone the fission process is extremely radioactive, Land said.

Areva has seen some growth during the years, but it has been taking over more of the market share versus expanding within the industry, Land said.

Most of the nuclear plants were built in the 1970s and 1980s. Since then, a few have been built, but a few also have been shut down. It’s kept business steady.

In the past, Japan has been the Richland plant’s largest export market, but it hasn’t sent nuclear fuel to Japan in recent years.

Japan’s nuclear utilities barely restarted operating this August, after a major earthquake and a tsunami created a major nuclear accident at three reac-

Bob Brawdy Tri-City Herald

Nuclear fuel rods sit on a vibratory rod loading table at the Areva manufacturing plant in Richland. Uranium oxide pellets are installed into the tubes before being welded closed. The company makes about 200,000 individual fuel rods each year.

tors in Fukushima in March 2011.

Areva’s own impact to the environment is lower than one might expect. All of the liquid effluent from the plant is clean enough to go directly into the city sewer system. And the plant filters air before it is released into the environment, Land said.

Very little regulated waste is produced because Areva tries to recycle and use each and every bit of uranium.

And the hydrofluoric acid produced as part of the process is sold to be used in semiconductor manufacturing, Tilden said.

Uranium is recovered from any scraps and used to make fuel. Areva incinerates combustible materials and recovers uranium from the ashes. And uranium also is recovered from the wash water used to clean the cylinders, Tilden said.

Nuclear fuel production is highly regulated. The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission is the primary nuclear regulator and has inspectors at the Richland facility for about a week each month, Land said.

Regulation is an essential part of the process, according to Land. It’s important to be able to have an independent regulator verifying that companies like Areva are correctly handling and manufacturing nuclear materials.

The Richland fuel fabrication plant has not had a significant accident or event during its 45-year history.

“We place a premium on being prepared,” Land said. “Always better to be prepared and never use it as opposed to the other way around.”

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Tri-City Herald

Sarah Gordon Tri-City Herald

Western Sintering President Jeff Wood talks about one of the powder metal parts coming off the press at the contract manufacturer’s facilities in Richland.

Western Sintering gives metal new life Richland company among first to turn Hanford technology into business KRISTI PIHL TRI-CITY HERALD

Anyone who has driven a Ford truck or fired a rifle using a Leupold Optics scope probably has benefited from the work done by Western Sintering.

The Richland company was among the first to spin off a Hanford technology and turn it into a successful, non-Hanford business.

Now, the Northwest’s only powder metal manufacturer is celebrating its 50th year in business.

Western Sintering doesn’t make the end product consumers buy. Instead, as a primary manufacturer, it makes the

parts another manufacturer will use to finish a truck, rifle scope or other consumer good.

The company uses powder metallurgy to create a multitude of parts for customers, some which end up in Ford vehicles and others that end up in sporting goods like knives and firearms. For example, they may make the hoop for a rifle scope mount or parts for the handle of a knife.

John Rector started the company in 1965, building a business off of a powder metal technique he learned while working on Hanford’s B Reactor. There, he used sintering — heating compacted powdered metal to bond it together without melting it — to make an aluminum-boron alloy into control rod material.

Rector was a machinist at heart, said Jeff Wood, the company’s president.

But his machine shop and powder

metallurgy business shifted to focus more on powder metal as the 1970s became the 1980s, with machine work as an add-on available to customers.

The process lends itself to producing a large volume of the same part, Wood said. They can make about 100,000 individual parts a week.

The company does work for Nelson Irrigation of Walla Walla and measuring devices for manufacturer Olympic Instruments of Vashon Island. But most of Western Sintering’s customers are out of the state.

“We are making different pieces for different customers all the time,” said Dave Morasch, the company’s vice president.

There is an upfront cost to creating the tool to compact the metal powder.

But the parts are competitively priced at volumes of a couple thousand parts a year and more, he said.

“

We are making different pieces for different customers all the time.

Dave Morasch, vice president Western Sintering

” The parts Western Sintering makes vary from a fraction of a gram to a couple of pounds, Wood said.

The metal powder is comprised of different ingredients, including iron, See WESTERN | Page 25

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WESTERN | Company does a lot with just 17 employees FROM PAGE 24

carbon, nickel and copper, he said. The exact mix depends on what the part is and how the customer plans to use it. It can be tailored to make stainless steel.

It’s a naturally green technology because the metal powder is made from recycled scrap metal. Some of it comes pre-mixed from the company’s suppliers along the East Coast. But Western Sintering also makes its own mixes.

For each component Western Sintering makes, there is a tool that is loaded into one of the company’s 12-foot-tall presses. Setup is time-consuming, taking a half day to prepare for pressing.

The loaded tool defines the shape of the part being made. Metal powder is spread into the die cavity, compacted by the press and comes out looking like the part.

That’s called the “green stage,” Morasch said. Although the part looks whole, it’s deceptive, and can break into chunks as easily as a chewy cookie.

One mechanical press can make about 15 parts a minute, he said. The older, hydraulic presses make up to

three parts a minute.

Workers remove some parts by hand and lay them out on trays and pans to travel through the sintering furnace. But other parts, especially those that are quite small and fragile, now are moved by a robot.

Morasch vividly recalls how painstaking it was to load those pieces by hand. They had to use padded tweezers, and still had to toss the parts they scrunched out of shape to be recycled back into metal powder. The company added the robots between the late 1990s and early 2000s.

The change has allowed them to do more without having to add more workers, Wood said.

Western Sintering does a lot with only 17 employees. Morasch said they are all cross-trained, which helps.

A number of their employees come from Columbia Basin College’s manufacturing/machine technology program.

Wood is on an advisory committee for that program.

The trays and pans are loaded onto a conveyer belt that takes them on a three-hour journey through the sinter-

ing furnace. They move about 1¾ inches per minute.

The furnace gradually brings the powder metal parts up to 2,050 degrees Fahrenheit, holds them at that temperature for about an hour and then gradually cools them down, Morasch said.

“It’s kind of like baking cookies,” Wood joked.

Only the parts that come out can’t be crumbled with the puny strength of a human hand.

The electric furnace uses a mix of nitrogen and hydrogen to keep oxygen away from the parts. If oxygen was present, it could oxidize the metal and mess up the surface.

Sometimes, small pieces of copper are placed on top of parts. Those copper pieces vanish into each part during the sintering process, filling any spaces between the powder metal particles.

Copper melts at 1,900 degrees.

The copper can leave some residue on the metal part. But that will come off when the parts go through the tumbler, where they are rolled against ceramic media to smooth the edges.

The presses are only in use one shift a

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day, five days a week. But the furnaces go 24-7 to keep up with what the presses produce, Morasch said.

Thanks to a loading and unloading system Rector designed and built, someone is always on call and may have to stop by to load Rector’s system, but they don’t have to staff a night or weekend shift.

Western Sintering recently invested in a fourth furnace, but has been too busy to invest the time it will take to set the furnace up and get it ready for sintering.

So far, Western Sintering is having one of its best years yet. The company survived the recession, but 2007 to 2010 were rough going, Morasch said.

It didn’t seem to matter how many jobs Morasch put together quotes for.

“People weren’t buying parts,” he said.

The company had 25 employees in 1995, but went down to 12 during the recession through attrition and retirements, Morasch said. They avoided layoffs, but everyone took off days unpaid.

But that shifted in 2011, and since then, each year has been better than the one before, he said. The same people he’d quoted to without getting jobs before came back ready to buy parts.

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Bob Brawdy Tri-City Herald

Chukar Cherries is a mid-size manufacturer in Prosser that has continued to grow and add employees under founder Pam Montgomery. Local economic development officials hope to provide the space and sales support needed to see more similar-sized manufacturers settle and succeed in the Mid-Columbia.

RECIPE FOR SWEET SUCCESS Prosser-based specialty food company Chukar Cherries creates dried, chocolate-covered cherries KRISTI PIHL TRI-CITY HERALD

Inspiration struck when Pam Montgomery was strolling through her Yakima Valley cherry orchard and snacking on some leftover cherries that had dried on the trees.

Her brainstorm led her to start Chukar Cherries, a Prosser-based specialty food company that creates dried cherries and chocolate-covered cherries and nuts for customers all over the United States and in Canada, Europe and Asia.

The Tri-Cities is home to some food manufacturing giants, like frozen potato manufacturer ConAgra Foods Lamb Weston. And there are many small food

manufacturers like Kennewick’s Adams Place Country Gourmet.

But there are few medium-size food manufacturers like Chukar Cherries, said Gary White, the Tri-City Development Council’s director of business retention and expansion. He calls Chukar Cherries “a specialty food rock star.”

Montgomery said she saw other good start-up specialty food companies fail because they tried to grow too fast.

She didn’t want to have that happen, or to get to the point where debt was calling the shots and not her and her team.

Chukar Cherries’ slow, steady growth for 26 years is one ingredient contrib-

uting to their success, she said.

“We have survived and thrived, which is a very difficult thing in value-added food,” Montgomery said.

White and other Tri-City economic development officials hope to help other companies find their own recipe for success. White says the lack of mediumsized food manufacturing businesses is an opportunity for the Tri-City area.

Last year, TRIDEC organized its first FABREO Columbia Basin show to help connect food and beverage manufacturers with potential customers and investors.

The idea of the Food and Beverage Retention & Expansion Opportunities event was to help grow the industry.

For being the first year, White said it went better than expected, with more than 100 companies signing up to exhibit at booths and more than 20 buyers,

retailers and brokerage firms coming from Los Angeles, Seattle, Spokane and Portland.

He’s hoping to draw in outside businesses to open a facility in the Northwest, as well as support and grow current Tri-City area food and beverage manufacturers.

The effort is trying to build off the bountiful local agricultural industry, as well as our proximity to Asia.

Officials with the Port of Pasco and the Pasco Specialty Kitchen also have put their heads together on how to help small food manufacturing businesses grow.

The Pasco Specialty Kitchen helps incubate small businesses, allowing them access to a commercial kitchen, classes and other support. Currently, 45 See RECIPE | Page 27

tricityherald.com

TRI-CITY MADE

Tri-City Herald •

Thursday, October 29, 2015

27

Bob Brawdy Tri-City Herald

Rosa Alvarez uses her gloved hands to create the chocolate-covered cherries in a copper panning kettle at Chukar Cherries in Prosser. Melted chocolate is poured in layers over the fruit as the kettle rotates and cool air is blown into opening, helping prevent the candy from clumping.

RECIPE | Dried cherries were company’s first product, with everything else built on it FROM PAGE 26

businesses are clients, and that’s growing, said Marilou Shea, the kitchen’s director.

What the Tri-Cities lacks is the next step up, something to support businesses that have outgrown the kitchen but don’t yet have the ability or need for their own manufacturing facility, Shea said.

Ideally, she’d like to see a shared processing facility developed to help those small companies expand.

“It is very much a real need,” she said.

Support is one of the things Montgomery said helped her business. Leasing the current manufacturing facility from the Port of Benton helped lessen manufacturing start-up costs.

Bringing together a great team of

workers also was critical, she said.

About six of her employees have worked for her for 15 years. And many of their seasonal employees return year after year to help during the holidays when production climbs and staffing jumps from 35 to 85.

Chukar Cherries also has found a specific niche. They sell direct to the consumer, and have many gift options available for those who want to give something they can’t find in a big box store.

Most orders come through the company’s website, but it also has retail outlets in Prosser, Seattle’s Pike Place Market and Leavenworth.

Montgomery said they’ve tried to respond to what customers like ever since the company began. They used to get letters but now they hear comments through social media.

She and her employees have always responded to them, and she’s made many changes to products, packaging, customer service, training and management based on that feedback.

About half of Chukar Cherries sales are chocolate covered local cherries and regional nuts.

They also create dried fruit, granola, dessert sauces, savories, preserves, cherry almond biscotti and more.

Dried cherries were the first Chukar Cherries product. Everything else has built on that.

When they add new products, they also discontinue something else. It’s key to staying fresh, she said.

She also said she has been deliberate about making sure she takes time to recharge to avoid the burnout that often torments small business owners.

But, ultimately, the product has to

keep customers coming back.

Cherries picked for Chukar Cherries hang on the trees for about two weeks longer than the ones headed for the fresh market. That makes them sweeter, Montgomery said.

They are dried at the company’s Prosser manufacturing plant, and then stored to be used year-round to create fresh chocolate-covered cherries and more.

Employees pour melted chocolate into rotating copper panning kettles.

Cool air blows on the cherries or nuts, helping to evenly coat the nuts and cherries.

A customer’s order is typically made shortly before being sent whether it is during the summer or Christmas season.

“Nothing goes out that is older than about two weeks,” Montgomery said.