News
Syracuse Castings puts muscle and metal to work for African nation project
By Doug Radunich, Staff Writer (PDF)

Syracuse Castings West, an aluminum and steel fabrication company in Tooele, recently finished manufacturing products to help supply fresh drinking water for residents of the impoverished African country of Guinea.

This past Saturday, the company finished manufacturing 60 aluminum access covers, also known as hatches, which will be used to cover the concrete structures that collect and distribute potable water to thousands in Guinea who have little or no access to clean or fresh water. A total of 35 ladders were also shipped out by the company as well.

Craig Anderson, general manager of Syracuse Castings, said the company’s employees worked from 6 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. on Saturday to finish manufacturing the hatches.

"We were contacted by a general contracting company in the Mountain West about this project," he said. "They called us out of the blue saying they were shipping other related equipment over to Guinea, and they wanted to include our hatches in the same containers. We started shipping them today [Monday]."

Syracuse Castings welder, John Cooper, welds an access cover Friday afternoon. Sixty of the covers are bound for Guinea, Africa, as part of a World Bank infrastructure project.

Anderson said the hatches and ladders were shipped out in trucks and off to a port located in Wilmington, N.C. He said the entire project cost around $120,000.

"They have to be at the port by Dec. 30, where they will meet up with other equipment and material from the company that informed us about the project, and then they will go onto a ship headed toward Africa," Anderson said. "They will go to different villages all around Guinea. There are contractors in Guinea who will do the installation of the hatches when they get there."

Guinea is a West African country suffering from civil wars in neighboring countries, poor infrastructure, environmental damage, and inadequate supplies of fresh, potable water.

Anderson said he looks forward to doing even more humanitarian projects for other developing nations.

"The general contractor of the company that notified us is a worldwide company that has done other successful projects like these," he said. "We will be sure to stay in touch with them and work on more of their upcoming projects."

He said philanthropy is part of Syracuse Castings West’s philosophy.

"We are extremely grateful to have our company play a large role in helping others in Third World countries, and this was a great volunteer effort on our part," he said. "Despite the economy, our business is strong, but more importantly, this project brings home why we come to work every day. If nothing else, at the end of the day, we must be sure we had a positive effect on the lives of others."

Tooele Transcript Bulletin
December 23, 2008, Vol. 115, No. 063