REC Silicon expanding again

Company investing about $320 million more in Moses Lake

MOSES LAKE — A company already expanding in Moses Lake announced it will add on even more.

Oslo, Norway-based Renewable Energy Corporation first announced plans in April to invest $485 million to increase production capacity in the United States by 9,000 metric tons of silane and 6,000 metric tons of polysilicon, beginning in 2010.

REC CEO Goran Bye said Monday, the company decided to locate the largest single piece of the new expansion, a silane production unit, at its Moses Lake facility.

"With the current climate out there in the global economy, we wanted to make sure we can utilize the investment we've already made in engineering and the construction workers and firms we will have on site," Bye said. "This new unit will actually piggy back on the old unit, and that was a significant savings in cost and time, compared to putting it somewhere else."

REC is investing at least one-third of the expansion in its plant in Butte, Montana, in order to make the plant very competitive as well, Bye added.

"It's not only in Moses Lake," he said.

The newly announced expansion should not have any impact upon the expansion already under way in REC Silicon's Moses Lake facility, Bye said.

"It's been one of our requirements (that) we have our priorities straight," he said. "The first priority is to run the existing plant safely and reliably. The second priority is to build the current expansion and make sure it will meet production as planned, and this is the third priority. We are organized and we have built so far in such a way it should not impact the ongoing expansion."

As construction ramps down on the existing expansion, Bye said resources should be able to immediately move over to the new expansion. Some details remain to be worked out, he added.

The new expansion would bring in about 30 new employees, Bye said, in addition to the 80 new jobs already coming in with the present expansion.

The second expansion is expected to be up and running in the first quarter of 2010.

Bye feels good about the decision to locate the largest piece in Moses Lake.

"We have the land, we have a good relationship (with) the community and we are seeing good progress in the expansion we're doing," Bye said. "For all those reasons, it's not a very courageous decision, so to speak, but of course, there are strategic questions we need to look into, like how much production capacity is it smart to have in the same location. We've taken all of that into account, and still decided to build it here."