Liberty Lake-based Telect Inc., the telecommunications-equipment manufacturer thats seemingly always in a growth spurt, has opened a plant in Brazil, is spending millions to expand at its campus here, and is hiring hundreds of workers to handle mushrooming sales.


Telect expected to begin construction this week on a $2 million, 53,000-square-foot multipurpose facility next to its headquarters complex at Liberty Lake. That project is in addition to a $5.5 million, 36,000-square-foot expansion of the administrative wing of its main building there, which already is under way and is expected to be completed in November.


Meanwhile, the company is beginning to ramp up operations at a new plant it opened in March in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and also still plans to open a plant somewhere in Asia by early next year.


International business has been a driving factor in Telects burgeoning sales, which hit $168 million last yearwell over projectionsand so far this year are outpacing expectations by 33 percent. First-quarter sales were a vigorous 71 percent higher than in the year-earlier period, the company says.


Telect also has shattered its employment projections in recent months. The company has hired roughly 400 people in the last six months, and expects to hire another 400 by the end of this year. It currently employs 1,420 people, about 970 of whom work here. Its list of open positions is growing daily and currently totals about 190 jobs, about 80 of which are administrative or technical positions, including about 20 in the engineering arena. The remaining open positions are for production workers who typically are hired as temps for a six-to-eight week probationary period. All but about 20 of the open positions are in Spokane, and all but about 30 represent new jobs, rather than replacements.


This has been an unbelievable year in sales, says Jeff Gibson, vice president for operations at Telect. Were running out of space everywhere right now. Every time we lay down a forecast, the market exceeds it.


Gibson says the new facility Telect will start work on this week will be located on a 3-acre parcel that the company bought last year on Madson Road, just southwest and adjacent to its main campus. Unlike the companys 156,000-square-foot headquarters building and main manufacturing plant, which has a brick exterior, the new facility will be a more cost-effective tilt-up concrete building, says Gibson.


The building, which will be erected by Haskins Co., of Spokane, likely will accommodate a mix of manufacturing, warehouse, and administrative uses, depending on what Telects needs are when it opens the facility in October, he says. Were changing so fast that what I tell you this week might change next week, he adds.


Telect also leases about 120,000 square feet of space in the Spokane Business & Industrial Park, and has tried for years to give up some of that space as it has expanded elsewhere, but has found that even as it has added new capacity, demand for its connectivity products grows, requiring more space and more employees.


In March, Telect acquired a Wroclaw, Poland, manufacturing subsidiary of German electronics giant Siemens AG. The unit, called Zaklady Elektroniczne ELWRO S.A., had been a sub-contractor for Telect for two years, providing assemblies for some Telect products for the European market. Its 360,000-square-foot plant there now is owned and operated by Telect, and employs 169 people.


Telect also employs about a dozen other people in Europe, most of whom are based at its customer- and technical-service center in Southampton, England.


The companys plant in Guadalajara, Mexico, which opened in 1997 and doubled in size last year, now employs 215 people and isalong with Liberty Lakeexpected to be one of the two locations for Telects greatest employment growth the rest of this year.


In Sao Paulo, the site of Telects newest expansion, the Liberty Lake manufacturer has opened a 20,000-square-foot plant in a high-tech business park that also is occupied by a host of other U.S. electronics companies. Gibson says the plant currently employs just a handful of people, but will have 20 to 40 employees by the end of the year. We want to keep it lean, he says.


Next, Gibson says, Telect will look to open a plant somewhere in Asia, probably in China. That operation is expected to be open by sometime in the first quarter of 2001, he says.


Were growing very fast right now, and part of that growth is from regional sales into Europe, South America, and Asia, Gibson says. We have to have production facilities in those regions, mostly because shipping product into many foreign countries is too costly and duties are too high. In some South American countries, for instance, Telect must pay tariffs of as much as 80 percent, making its products much less competitive than rivals that have factories there.


Its especially important to be a player in Brazil and neighboring countries because, South America is exploding right now in telecommunications, he says.


Back in Liberty Lake, Telect is scrambling to meet its work-force needs in a relatively tight local job market and in an industry starved for more technical workers, says Susan Meyer, vice president for human resources and corporate relations.


Weve seen a dramatic increase in business and our employment growth also is higher than predicted, she says. Our hairs on fire.


Still, Meyer says, Telect believes that its been fortunate to be able to attract employees to Spokane from a national job market. She notes that it has relocated 12 families here in recent months, some from much larger markets. People are still thinking its a good place to work.


With the 400 more workers Telect expects to hire this year, it will employ more than 1,800 by years end.