The highest-capacity wash plant in the Southwest is now online at Gila River Sand & Gravel’s Blackwater Plant.
Belts first turned on the 1,000-tph behemoth back in January in Coolidge, Arizona, where Superior Industries and Kimball Equipment collaborated with Gila River over the course of many years to bring the custom-built, high-capacity wash plant to life.
Gila River project manager Scott Wetherbee detailed in mid-March how the plant is exceeding his company’s expectations, characterizing the project as the “smoothest” he’s been a part of during his career.
From Wetherbee’s view, the ease by which the plant came together is a tremendous credit to everyone involved at Superior and Kimball.
“I’ve been involved in dozens of projects, and this was by far the smoothest of the projects from the inception to the commissioning,” says Wetherbee, whose career in the sand and gravel industry spans more than 30 years. “Everything was pretty flawless. There was a ton of communication. There really weren’t any problems I can think of. I have no complaints.”
Calling on the dealer
The origin of the wash plant, which produces C33 concrete sand and mortar sand, predates Wetherbee’s arrival to Gila River.
As Wetherbee recalls, Gila River first had discussions about a wash plant like the one it erected at the Blackwater Plant around 2014 or 2015.
Because the construction market never fully bounced back around that time following the Great Recession, a decision on a plant was delayed. COVID added another wrinkle to a wash plant moving forward.
Gila River’s discussions got more serious in 2023, though.
“We did some visits, layout work and we even went out and sampled material with Gila River in three or four locations to get an accurate gradation,” says Todd Uphoff, who heads Kimball’s Technical Solutions Team that helps customers with all phases of project development. “After that, we went back and forth with plant layout and their requirements. They wanted to build a 1,000-tph plant.”
The plant Gila River constructed features two 8-ft. x 20-ft. wet Guardian horizontal screens that are fed by clay-scrubbing blade mills, two Spirit sand plants with Helix cyclones and dewatering screens, and systems that optimize water use and reduce waste.
Wetherbee had a vision for a plant like this before he ever contacted Kimball.
“I was working with Kimball on multiple other projects,” Wetherbee says. “I knew Kimball was a good company, so I reached out and explained how we wanted to build a plant. I asked if we could sit down and talk about it.”
Kimball agreed, bringing Superior into the fold.
“I met with a lot of their design engineers and process engineers,” Wetherbee says of Superior. “We talked about the needs of Gila River, and we started sketching out the plant that we have today.”
Wetherbee was impressed with the approach Superior and Kimball representatives took in the project’s earliest stages.
“They brought an entire team,” he says. “Kimball and Superior both brought multiple people, and everybody was willing to listen. They didn’t interject. They didn’t try to overpower or overpromise. They just said they’d need to go back and look at a few things, that they’d get back to us and that they thought they can do this.”
Superior and Kimball met several times with Gila River leaders before costs were presented. Wetherbee appreciates how the costs were laid out.
“We sat down and looked at every line item,” he says. “Sometimes, you have to ask vendors to ‘line item’ a quote. They did that on their own. They showed us exactly what they were going to charge us. I felt nothing was hidden.”
Ultimately, Wetherbee says Gila River selected Superior and Kimball because of the service the two provide.
“I had never dealt with Superior,” Wetherbee says. “But I’ve dealt with Kimball for probably the last decade. I knew the quality of the people I was getting involved with.”
The more time Wetherbee spent with Superior, the more he liked what he saw and heard.
“It became more evident that this is the company we needed to do business with on this turnkey operation because they bring the whole deal to the table,” he says. “They can do design on the equipment and process side. They have a service team. They have the ability to build alongside Kimball.
“It just felt right,” Wetherbee adds.
Gears turning
Once Gila River made a commitment to partner with Superior and Kimball, regular meetings were scheduled between all parties.
“We set up a weekly Teams meeting,” Wetherbee says. “It was every Friday, and everybody involved would talk. We would discuss safety first before getting into what was happening each week and what needed to be accomplished over the next couple of weeks. It made the project go smoothly.”
Josh Bashford served as Superior’s onsite manager for the project. As Wetherbee says, Gila River appreciated the communication Bashford offered as project manager.
“Anytime there was a question or a potential issue, he was on the phone and would let the team know about potential problems and what needed to be done to fix it,” Wetherbee says. “At the end of the project, there were only three change orders. I think that’s a testament to everybody communicating upfront and doing their part and catching mistakes – or potential mistakes before they were ever real.”
Kimball was extremely supportive of Gila River throughout the project, as well.
“Anytime I had a problem, I would go through Todd because he was my salesman,” says Wetherbee, adding that one of the beauties of the project was that he did not have to be on-site every day because of the trust Superior and Kimball earned. “Todd would communicate it up the chain to Superior. We as Gila River would sit down with Kimball and Superior, which would say: ‘Here’s the problem. Here’s the potential solution. Here’s how it’s going to cost.’”
In Wetherbee’s experience, every plant project is different. But between the quoting phase and the time the wash plant turned on, Gila River’s experience at the Blackwater Plant was unique.
“It was smooth during quoting, fabrication, equipment delivery, with concrete foundation crews showing up on time doing their thing – all the way through,” says Wetherbee, who’s now running the plant with three people.
The positive overall experience extended to the plant commissioning stage.
“We had very few big problems when we turned it on,” Wetherbee says. “Normally, you have multiple bugs you have to go back and fix. We had a few, but they were very minimal.”
