ML complex working to restore jobs

Central Terminals working to become 'world class' industrial plant

MOSES LAKE — General manager Bob Fancher advises visitors to watch their step while walking around the Central Terminals LLC site.

While a sweet, sugary smell is in the air, walking through the molasses on the ground might ruin your shoes.

"This is part of the hazards of ending up with an old sugar plant, is getting molasses out of these tanks," Fancher said. The site is the former Pacific Northwest Sugar Company, which closed in 2002.

Five-year-old molasses is being scrubbed out of some of the tanks, which sit on what Fancher calls an industrial complex with unlimited potential. The molasses will go into livestock feed, and can only be moved out in the summer heat, because it will harden in colder temperatures.

"The community lost approximately 350 jobs when they closed the plant down, and our goal is to replace those jobs," Fancher said. "We're about halfway there now with what we've got signed up, and (the goal is to) just put it into a world class industrial plant."

Clean-up efforts are under way at the site.

"We spent the last three years trying to clean the place up," Fancher said while driving around the property, noting a "massive amount of equipment" was moved out of the site.

Specialty Chemical purchased six acres of land, an administration building, a shop and two main process buildings, it was announced in April. Old equipment is still being removed for the chemical company.

Fancher said public record indicates the property has been sold to Moses Lake Ethanol and the land sale has been closed. Further announcements will be forthcoming, he added.

Formed in 2000, the company changed its name from Central Leasing of Washington to Central Terminals in 2005 because it's more of a terminals-type industrial park, Fancher said.

"We're turning the whole thing into industrial park, but it will be more for receiving and shipping," he explained. "We'll take advantage of the rail."

A tank farm, formerly molasses storage, has been replumbed and placed in containment so they are able to store more than molasses and water, such as dry storage, and the site is set up to unload rail cars and load out trucks, Fancher said, calling the tanks a terminal for liquid fertilizers and highway de-icers.

The site presently handles most of the state's highway salt, several different products of which come in on rail car in August and are stored in various locations on the land. In the winter, as needed, the products are hauled out by truck, Fancher said, estimating that 30,000 to 40,000 tons of salt will be on the location. That work will continue once the chemical operation moves in.

"Not a week goes by that we don't talk to somebody about something," Fancher said of interest in the complex.

Fancher expects more industrial development on the 1,500-acre complex, with the ethanol plant occupying about 140 acres.

"There's infrastructure here for an unlimited amount of industrial development," he said, pointing to a 6-million-gallon process firewater protection tank, which he said is more than double the capacity of the largest City of Moses Lake water tank.