Getting the boost it needed to emerge from a two-year business lull, longtime Spokane industrial manufacturer Rahco International Inc. has landed a roughly $20 million contract to design and construct two massive conveyor and stacking systems for North Americas largest copper mine.


Rahco learned early this month that it had beaten out a German manufacturer to supply Phoenix-based Phelps Dodge Corp. with some of the equipment needed for a $220 million expansion and conversion project the international mining giant has launched at its Morenci copper mine, which is located about 150 miles east of Phoenix.


Details of the contract are still being worked out, but the project is expected to be worth between $18 million and $22 million to Rahco, which has built similar systems throughout the world, says Rahco President Richard Hanson. The Spokane company now has 18 months to design, manufacture, ship, assemble, and test the systems, Hanson says. As a result of that new business and other expected new contracts, he says, Rahco will be hiring between 25 and 50 workers within the next six months, including engineers, marketing people, and shop workers.


Each of the two systems Rahco will make for the Morenci project will include a mobile conveyor and a large stacker that together will be able to carry and stack 2,800 tons of copper ore an hour. The heavy-duty conveyors run along 132-foot-long steel sections, each 12 feet tall by 12 feet wide, that will be connected to span over 2,600 feet in lengthabout half a mile. The conveyors will feed the Rahco-made stackers, each of which will be able to reach out from their associated conveyor a radius of 180 feet.


The computer-controlled conveyor systems will be able to move laterally thanks to its numerous giant crawler tracks, also manufactured by Rahco.


Rahco expects to begin manufacturing the systems in December, and to beginning shipping them in pieces to Morenci via truck and rail next May and through the summer. A handful of Rahco employees will spend as long as four months at Morenci overseeing the assembly and testing of the systems, says Rahco project engineer Lello Galassi.


The systems will be used to move large volumes of crushed copper ore to heap-leach pads, where the copper content will be leached out with a sulfuric acid solution that then will be collected and put through an electroplating process to recover the copper. The overall process is called SX/EW, which stands for solution extraction electrowinning. It can cut copper-processing costs by more than half compared with conventional smelters, says Hanson.


Thats why Phelps Dodge is converting its Morenci copper operation over to SX/EW, he says. The Rahco equipment is the centerpiece of that conversion, and Rahco might build additional conveyors and stackers for the mine.


Hanson says the copper mining industry has known for years that SX/EW was a more efficient production process than smeltering, but largely had been hesitant to make the expensive conversion while copper was selling for as much as $1.40 pound and conventional milling was costing about 80 cents a pound. However, copper prices had plummeted to a low of about 60 cents a pound since then, and although they recovered recently to about 80 cents, industry experts believe they will only crest $1 or so a pound in the next few years, giving mining companies ample incentive now to reduce costs for the longer term, Hanson says. With SX/EW, processing costs run around 35 cents a pound.


That bodes well for Rahco, whose equipment moves and stacks onto leach pads large volumes of ore relatively cheaply, he says. The Spokane company expects to land other, similar contracts as the mining industry recovers from its slump and begins to make efficiency investments.


The big contract with Phelps Dodge also is a feather in Rahcos hat for another reason. Phelps Dodge, one of the worlds largest copper producers, is trying to acquire New York-based Asarco Inc., another big copper producer. Last month, it announced it would acquire Denver-based Cyprus Amax Minerals Co. Merging of the three companies would create the worlds largest private copper producer.


Rahco, which just two years ago had sales of $35 million and employed roughly 200 people, suffered greatly in 1998 and through much of this year, after the mining industry, its top customer, reined in its horns.


Rahco managed revenues last year of just $11 million from minor projects for customers that buy canal-building equipment, as well as other small sales, Hanson says.


The companys employment fell to about 80 people, but now is at 100 and is expected to climb, he says. Other industrial manufacturers, however, failed to survive the mining lull, he adds. Rahco competitor Har-nischfeger Industries Inc., a giant, Milwaukee-based maker of mining equipment, filed for protection from creditors in U.S. Bankruptcy Court last summer and is seeking buyers for some of its business units.


It hit the whole industry, says Hanson. Every manufacturer of mining equipment was hurt. It says a lot for us that we survived.


Because revenues from the new, 18-month contract wont affect this years sales much, Rahco expects to have 1999 sales of only about $11 million to $12 million, he says, adding, Next year, though, well be back to our normal, in the $20-million-to-$30-million range.


Last month, Rahco also landed a $5 million contract from the U.S. Department of Energy to develop equipment capable of installing an impermeable liner beneath landfills that contain potentially harmful waste.