LA Aluminum Casting Co., the growing Hayden Lake, Idaho-based metal foundry, plans to market directly to consumers some of its specialty metal parts soon as part of a new online venture.

The company will use a new warehouse being completed this month, located at its headquarters at 1905 Miles Ave. in Hayden, to store its inventory and to house its shipping operations and some new equipment.

Polin & Young Construction, of Hayden, Idaho, is constructing the 10,000-square-foot steel building at a cost of about $1 million, says Michelle Richter, sales and marketing director at LA Aluminum.

The foundry will use the warehouse to store and ship its parts, specifically its Camlock-type fittings, also known as cam and groove couplings, which are commonly used to connect hoses to tanks or other hoses, Richter says. She adds that the fittings have been one of the company's main pieces during the last three years.

She says the direct marketing venture is an entirely new concept for the company.

"It's unusual for a foundry to operate this way," she says. "Most foundries don't sell their own product, and certainly not online, but the site (laaluminum.com) has high visibility," on a search engine query for aluminum casting.

Richter adds, "We want to take advantage of that and sell the parts we're making."

The company had said in September that it had about 50 employees then, but expected that number to rise over the next three years to about 80.

Typically, LA Aluminum casts aluminum-alloy pieces that are components of products its customers manufacture but don't have the technology to make themselves. For example, LA Aluminum casts threaded nut rings for the U.S. military, which installs them in 210,000-gallon fuel tanks and other fuel cells in planes and helicopters.

Besides the aluminum fittings, the website also will sell other specialty parts that LA Aluminum makes, Richter says, adding that most of the site's consumer base will be other original equipment manufacturers.

LA Aluminum owns the proprietary information on how to make the parts it will sell on the site, while its special order-based customers provide their own engineering plans for parts the foundry casts for them, she says.

Work for the military is part of what has enabled the foundry to weather the recession with a 25 percent increase in sales each year since 2008, Richter says.

"Commercial was down, but the military (work) was way up," she says. "That's why we didn't experience the recession."

Last year, LA Aluminum bought three new pieces of machining equipment, and Richter says the company is looking to purchase more this year, including new coring equipment. LA Aluminum uses sand cores to make the molds for the pieces it casts.

Richter says the additional space the new warehouse provides also will enable the company to rearrange equipment in its three older structures to make space for newly purchased equipment. The reinforced concrete floor in the new building was designed to accommodate the weight of the company's heavy machinery pieces, she says.

Richter says LA Aluminum recently has entered some new markets, such as making aluminum products for the green-energy industry. One of those products is an aluminum spool for diamond-encrusted wire that's used for cutting solar cells, as well as for cutting sapphires for light-emitting diode (LED) lights.

Richter says the foundry also has expanded some of its work in the dental-care sector and is in the process of casting the bases for dental-examination chairs.

Other big jobs the casting company is looking at in the near future include making some lightweight aluminum parts for the U.S. military's mine-resistant, ambush-protected (MRAP) vehicles, which are heavily-armored trucks designed for use in the Middle East.

Richter says that LA Aluminum already casts the nut rings for the manufacturer of the MRAPs' fuel tanks, which are designed to absorb bullets directly into the tanks' shell and prevent explosion.