Quarry Tile Co. says its Spokane Valley manufacturing plant is at capacity and its considering either expanding the facility a fifth time or perhaps opening a second plant here.


The longtime Spokane manufacturer currently employs about 120 workers and produced about 4 million square feet of tile last year, says company President Sean OKeefe. It occupies 180,000 square feet of floor space in its 200,000-square-foot building at 6328 E. Utah, near Felts Field. It shares that facility with a sister company called Precision H2O Inc. and leases out a small amount of office space there to DataPro Solutions Inc.


OKeefe says he would prefer to expand at the companys current location, increase efficiency at the plant, and hire few if any more workers. If expanding there isnt feasible, the company will consider opening a second manufacturing plant here, though he says its not likely that would happen within the next couple years, and its too early to project employee numbers for such a facility.


Every year we seem to grow, OKeefe says. Our revenue has increased between 10 percent and 15 percent in each of the past four years, and wed like to see it continue to grow another 5 percent to 10 percent a year in the next five years.


Demand for the companys commercial tile remains high because commercial construction is strong nationally, he says. Although U.S. residential construction is down, the high-end quality of Quarry Tiles residential tile keeps it in demand, he adds.


Quarry Tile employed 80 workers when it moved from Spokane Industrial Park to its current location in 1992, and it has added workers at a steady pace since then, OKeefe says. The current location, which occupies 3.5 acres and includes some vacant ground for possible expansion, is owned by Dick Baiter, who owns both Quarry Tile and Precision H2O. The plant there has been expanded four times since Quarry tile moved to the site.


Every time we increase capacity were able to fill it, he says. Were at capacity now, with a five- to-six week backlog of orders.


Meanwhile, Quarry Tiles sister company, Precision H20, which cuts, designs, and shapes ceramic tile with sophisticated water-jet saws and uses the equipment to cut machine parts from metal for other customers, also is growing steadily.


Heather OKeefe, manager of Precision H2O and Sean OKeefes wife, says Precision H20 employs 20 people here and another four at a branch office in Salt Lake City. She says the company plans to add a third water-jet saw here soon at a cost of $300,000 to help it keep up with demand. The company plans to add two employees in connection with that purchase.


Precision H2O, which was launched in 1992, cuts any material, from foam to titanium, and does designs as intricate as reproducing the engraving on a penny and such not so intricate work as cutting 10-inch-thick pieces of steel.


Heather OKeefe is the daughter of Baiter, who retired from the two companies recently. He remains chairman of both companies and thus is involved in any major decisions the companies make, says Sean OKeefe. He says no plans are in the works for Baiter to sell the businesses.


The two companies dont release revenue figures. OKeefe says their markets largely are outside of the Spokane area, and both companies volumes are made up entirely of custom orders.


Quarry Tile


Quarry Tile, which employs three shifts of workers, operates 24 hours a day, five days a week, and sometimes on weekends, OKeefe says.


He says the company sells only to tile distributors, and serves about 300 distribution outlets nationwide, roughly 220 of which receive their tile through a contract Quarry Tile has with Dallas-based Daltile Corp. About 75 percent of the tile Quarry Tile sells is used commercially, and the remainder is used in residential construction, says OKeefe.


The companys minimum order for tile is 300 square feet, and its retail prices range up to about $4 a square foot for wall tile, $8 a square foot for floor tile, and $15 a square foot for artistic tile, OKeefe says.


He says the biggest obstacle to future growth for Quarry Tile is the magnitude of work it takes to transform raw clay, brought in by rail cars and by truck, into quarter-inch thick pieces of ceramic tile no bigger than 12 inches square.


Tile is a very labor-intensive product to make, OKeefe says.


Dirk Elliott, Quarry Tiles product development manager, says it takes five days to manufacture tile from the time raw clay is dumped on conveyor belts that carry it into the warehouse to begin the manufacturing process.


In a typical batch, about 45,000 pounds of raw clay is mixed with water in a 30,000-gallon spherical mill. About 15,000 pounds of large rocks inside the mill crush the clay as the huge sphere, which rotates in a rolling motion much like that of a concrete mixer, forms a slurry of clay and water. Pieces of rock and impurities are screened out from the coarse slurry as its removed from the mill, Elliott says.


Large electrical pumps propel the slurry upward through a pipe nearly to the top of the interior of a 60-foot high silo, where its sprayed like a lawn sprinkler into intensely heated air, Elliott says. He says the extreme high temperatures of the air hit the slurry immediately when it emerges from the pipe, and as the slurry drifts toward the bottom of the silo, where temperatures are lower, its transformed into a dry powder.


That powder is dustless, leaving workers in a safe environment, and has some characteristics of water, so it can be poured into automated drawers that measure precise amounts of the powder into steel dyes, where it is compacted by hydraulic presses that exert up to 650 tons of pressure. In a millisecond, the presses compress the powder into pieces of fragile bisque tile that later will be fired in a kiln to convert it into ceramic tile.


The bisque tile is moved into a room where its dried at temperatures of 140 degrees Fahrenheit and 30 percent humidity until it reaches its 6 percent optimal moisture content for kiln firing, OKeefe says. If the bisque tile includes anything other than the optimal amount of moisture, it will explode in the kiln, he says.


After drying, the bisque tile is conveyed through one of two about 200-foot long, $1 million kilns for about an hour at about 2,100 degrees Fahrenheit. In that process, the bisque tile shrinks about 8 percent, molecules in it cling together tightly, and the tile pieces that emerge from the kiln are strong, he says.


Precision H2O


Heather OKeefe says Precision H2O earns about half of its revenue by making machine parts, with much of that business coming from manufacturers in the Spokane area.


An additional about 25 percent of Precision H2Os revenue comes from cutting tile for Quarry Tile, and the remaining 25 percent comes from other custom orders. The company completed and shipped out more than 400 custom orders last year for art pieces such as murals and corporate logos, she says.


She says the turnaround time to make parts is much shorter than the turnaround time required for cutting tile or custom art pieces, which are made from brass, stone, porcelain, or other materials.


OKeefe says Precision H2Os future growth will depend partly on its ability to reach art-related customers, who are located almost exclusively outside of Washington state. That problem is compounded by a misperception that Precision H2Os services are priced higher than they really are, she says.


She says detailed tile work, with no minimum order, can cost about $25 a square foot, and detailed murals cost up to $150 a square foot.


The detailed art pieces can include multicolored, multisized pieces of tile or other materials arranged to create patterns pleasing to the eye, plus designs added on those pieces.


Our big niche is having multiple saws that can provide a wide variety of cuts and services, she says.


Quarry Tile was launched in 1965 by Emmett Burley, of Spokane, who sold the business to Baiter in 1978.


Contact Rocky Wilson at (509) 344-1264 or via e-mail at rockyw@spokanejournal.com.