Spokane Valley-based Precision Cutting Technologies Inc., a fabrication shop that is experiencing growth in making parts for several manufacturing companies here, is expanding its production area by almost double with a $500,000 building addition.

Owners Clint and Brenda Grassel say the company specializes in industrial and architectural part-cutting and signage, using water jet and laser cutting equipment. PCT also provides machining services.

Located at 16208 E. Lacrosse, just north of the Spokane Business & Industrial Park near Trent Avenue, the company is adding 9,500 square feet of floor space, bringing its total building area to 17,500 square feet of space.

Haskins Co., of Spokane, is the general contractor for that project, which is expected to be finished in November. PCT owns nearly 2 acres there, where it has operated for just over seven years, Clint Grassel says. He and his wife started the company in 1999 at a smaller facility on Montgomery Drive in Spokane Valley.

Grassel says, "We do expect to see business continue to grow. We anticipate additional work from existing customers, and we gained a couple of new solid customers recently for some new work."

The business's customers include Wagstaff Inc., Telect Inc., and Kaiser Aluminum Corp., among others. The company, which has 14 employees, including two hired recently, provides services to cut a range of materials, including plastic, rubber, fiberglass, and metals.

Grassel says the company's workload picked up significantly about six months ago, requiring it to run staggered shifts from about 4:30 a.m. to midnight five days a week, with each employee working about 10 hours a day.

"A lot of our customers we've done work for have helped us grow," Grassel says. "We're running at about 20 hours a day of production Monday through Friday, so we're kind of tapped out without the addition."

He adds, "For a couple of years before, we were running from about 5 a.m. or 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. The addition will give us the ability to collapse our shifts down a bit and also allow for future expansion, and for the ebb and flow of work."

The couple declines to disclose the company's annual revenues, but says they've trended upward since 2009, with the most significant growth occurring last year.

"2012 was our best year in history," Brenda Grassel says. "Revenue this year is on par with last year. We're down a bit in sales revenue, but we're up in profitability because we've taken a lean manufacturing approach," which includes making production processes more efficient to get items out the door faster.

Clint Grassel says the company plans to spend about $250,000 to buy two to three additional pieces of equipment initially in conjunction with the expansion. Depending on demand for its part-cutting services, total capital expenditure for machines could reach $1.5 million in the next two years, he adds.

"We're going to expand in the CNC (computer numerical control) machining equipment, and it will allow us to do what we currently do faster and expand into some markets we haven't tapped," he says.

Although the company primarily does work for other manufacturers, it also makes a product it calls split joint casings for encasing underground cables. Grassel says PCT has sold that product mainly to government agencies such as transportation departments in various states. However, he adds that the company recently began increasing its marketing of the split joint casings to attract customers from among utilities, fiber optics providers, and telecom companies.

PCT makes the product in 10-foot lengths, and it can fabricate fittings and custom bends for the piping. Grassel says the steel pipes arrive at the company in full-round form, and its employees then split them in half and weld tabs onto the halves for bolting the pipe sections together when they're installed at a site.

"They can bolt it together in the field, and then if someone needs to replace cable later for a section of the pipe, the worker can take off a top section by unscrewing the bolts on the side," Grassel adds. He says the piping product is manufactured in such a way that customers also easily can extend a cable line in another direction, by adding onto a section of piping installed previously.

Meanwhile, for PCT's client work involving the cutting and machining of pieces, the company has two large water jet cutting machines that use a highly pressurized jet of water mixed with fine garnet sand to cut up to 6-inch-thick material.

The company also operates one laser cutting machine that uses a focused beam of light to cut pipes and thinner pieces of metal. That machine is used about 10 percent of the time for cutting pipe, and the rest of the time to cut thinner metal plates. The laser cutting machine is rated to cut through steel that's up to half an inch thick and stainless steel and aluminum that's up to a quarter-inch thick.

Additionally, the shop has two computer-controlled machines to make manufactured pieces, including one to lathe round stocks of steel and aluminum and the other to fabricate pieces with tools. The company's employees also do hand-machining with tools.

Grassel says the business provides services to a number of industries here, including aerospace, food processing, farm equipment, architecture, and contract manufacturing. He says both he and his wife work in the daily operations. He oversees production and the functions of a small front office, and Brenda Grassel handles human resources and accounting roles.