By KEVIN KOELLING
Managing Editor
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| Chuck Riley operates an extruder at the Cannelton manufacturer's plant. Heating the piping created here to 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit will harden it in a process called vitrification. PHOTOS: Kevin Koelling | |
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CANNELTON - They've slowed down, but they're by no means out.
The first seven months of this year brought a 10-percent increase in gross sales over last year, Mark Bruce said of the financial health of Can Clay, manufacturer of clay sewer pipe being inserted into soil across the nation and around the world.
A slump in the housing market required the company to lay off about 50 percent of its hourly work force - approximately 25 people - "but we expect to be back full blast before the end of the year," said Bruce, the company's president. "We'll have a depletion of our inventory that will require us to pick up."
Down time is not unusual for the Cannelton firm. Can Clay's tunnel kilns run without interruption most of each year, then undergo two or three months' maintenance. "We try to match that shutdown with demand from the construction industry," Bruce said.
The durability of the company's products means repeat business doesn't contribute much to the demand.
"We guarantee our products for sanitary sewage to last 100 years as a minimum," Bruce said. "No other products offer a warranty close to that."
Sewer systems in the area of the Mediterranean were constructed to crude standards, relative to today's, but have lasted 4,000 years, he added. Today's clay pipes are created through very sophisticated manufacturing methods that guarantee they'll create air- and water-tight joints.
Because of its long life, the clay pipe his company provides is ideal for big cities that are either seeing home or industry growth or that have to rehabilitate existing systems. Bruce said, for example, Atlanta is in the midst of a $6 billion upgrade of its systems.
Their durability is important for reasons beyond cost.
If the shingles on a roof go bad, they can be torn off and replaced, Bruce said. It's not as simple with sewers. When they need work, streets and the utilities under them have to be dug up.
"The cost of fixing them is very great because they're hard to get to," Bruce said.
Digging is less a part of the installation process, he explained. A "microtunneling" process that came to the United States in the 1980s and '90s allows workers to push pipe through the ground, guided by laser or camera systems, he explained. Machines with rotating cutting wheels lead the way, with pipe actually pushing them 1,000 feet at a time, as deep as 70 feet.
A manufacturing process called vitrification hardens the clay until it can withstand jacking loads - the amount of pressure applied to the end of a pipe during that tunneling process - up to more than 3,100 tons in the strongest pipe Can Clay makes.
With all of that going for it, why not keep producing at top capacity?
"From everything we're hearing, sales are likely to be weaker the next six months," Bruce said. "This allows us to reduce our inventory through decreased production." Explaining why that's desirable, he said, "we could have $1 million in pipe sitting around, or we could have $1 million in the bank earning interest."