Colmac Coil Manufacturing Inc., a Colville, Wash.-based maker of components for heating and cooling systems, has landed a big contract to provide equipment for an airport in the Middle East, and that large order is requiring it to boost its work force by 25 percent and to expand its production facility.


The company, which currently employs 75 people, likely will hire 12 to 18 more production workers to help meet demands from the new order, which involves supplying cooling coils for an air-conditioning system at the major expansion of Dubai International Airport, says Bruce Nelson, Colmac Coil president. The airport is near the city of Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates.


We closed on a large contract thats going to require a significant increase in staff, Nelson says.


He declines to say what the contract is worth other than that its the biggest contract the 36-year-old company has ever had.


Colmac has started construction on a new 14,000-square-foot production facility at its 200,000-square-foot industrial and office complex in Colville, located about 70 miles north of Spokane near U.S. 395. The $600,000, structure is being assembled by James W. Elmer Construction Inc., of Spokane, and was pre-engineered by Butler Manufacturing Co., of Kansas City, Mo.


They need the floor space, says Rob Elmer, project manager for Elmer Construction. They are running out of room.


Elmer says the new structure will include three interior overhead cranes and an isolated concrete slab for a heavy stamping press.


Nelson says the stamping press, which forms the metal fins for cooling coils, has 110 tons of stamping capacity.


It can send up a lot of vibration, he says. The concrete pad helps isolate the vibration from the rest of the building.


Colmac Coil, which is a subsidiary of Colmac Industries Inc., also of Colville, manufactures industrial heat exchangers and related equipment for heating and cooling systems, or as Nelson calls them, big radiators. Colmac Industries manufactures separately commercial laundry finishing equipment. Together, the two companies employ more than 150 people.


Dubai, one of seven emirates in the United Arab Emirates, is on the south shore of the Persian Gulf.


The climate there provides difficult challenges for the air-conditioning industry, because Dubai is in one of the worlds warmest regions. A Dubai tourism Web site describes daytime summer temperatures as being typically well over 100 degrees, with the Dubai summer being eight months long, from March through October.


The climate is also comparatively humid, which makes cooling even more difficult, Nelson says. He says the Dubai airport serves more than 20 million airline passengers annually.


The airport traffic, which has grown an average of 15 percent annually since 2000, connects to about 200 locations through a network of 113 international airlines, the airports Web site says. Expansion of two concourses and a terminal will increase the airports capacity to 60 million passengers annually.


Nelson says, Its becoming a hub for passengers traveling to and from Europe, Asia, and Africa.


Contact Mike McLean at (509) 344-1266 or via e-mail at mikem@spokanejournal.com.