U.S. Linen & Uniform, of Richland, Wash., says it will be looking to grow its presence in the Spokane area after winning a roughly $1 million exclusive contract to supply linens, uniforms, mats, and other related rental and laundry services to state agencies throughout Eastern Washington.

"Our goal is to expand" in Spokane, says Vince Rosano, U.S. Linen's operations director. "We feel this is a large market area for us."

The company already has added one employee to its six-year-old branch here, giving it a total of eight employees and nine trucks here, and it hopes to add more employees as it garners additional government and private-sector clients, Rosano says. Its branch is located in the Spokane Business & Industrial Park, in Spokane Valley.

Its contract with the state encompasses agencies such as the big Department of Social and Health Services, but also allows it to offer the same pricing to other entities, such as universities and community colleges, which negotiate such services separately, as well as local government jurisdictions and nonprofits, he says.

Greg Rudolph, a regional sales representative here for U.S. Linen, says the company already has negotiated agreements with some departments at Spokane Falls Community College and Spokane Community College.

U.S. Linen says it wrested the state contract from Aramark Corp., a national company that had held it for 14 years. Rosano says this was the first year the state had agreed to split the state in two for bidding purposes. U.S. Linen's contract, which took effect Jan. 1, is for two years and includes an option to renew for four more, he says.

U.S. Linen is a family-owned company that was founded in 1944 to provide laundry services for Hanford workers, Rosano says. It employs about 110 people overall and has other branch offices in Moses Lake, Yakima, and Pendleton, Ore. In the Inland Northwest, it also serves an outlying area that stretches from Colville to Pullman, and in Idaho from Lewiston to Sandpoint, Rosano says.

The company has been pursuing an aggressive expansion strategy over the last 10 years, growing about 15 percent a year during that time, compared with an industrywide annual growth rate of 5 percent, he says.