Bracing for a jolt: Japanese firm builds a Reno plant

Nevada's friendly business climate beats anything neighbor California could offer, says Konrad Eriksen, vice president of Yajima USA, Ltd., and the firm's manager.

And that's the primary reason its Japan-based parent company is opening its first and only U.S.

plant in Reno.

The new 20,000-square-foot facility is being set up to manufacture one major product: Unbonded Braces.

The product is patented and is one that structural and mechanical engineers alike can love, says Eriksen.

It's a structural brace consisting of a steel core plate surrounded by mortar and enclosed in a steel tube.

It's used in skyscraper and steel building construction, working with the structure to create a combination of steel frame and Unbonded Braces that can take a considerable seismic load such as an earthquake.

"It's not an energy-dissipation device," Eriksen adds.

It's just a brace.

But it performs better than a standard brace, absorbing earthquake energy and allowing the primary structural frame to remain undamaged.

That its earthquake resistance is its major selling point.

The plant,Yajima USA, Ltd., is the U.S.

arm of the company and is owned by Yajima Co.

Ltd, a family-owned Japanese company, whose main customer is Japan's Nippon Steel Corp.

The plant set up here is intended primarily to serve Nippon Steel's U.S.

customers.

It made business sense to build a plant here rather than ship the braces, says Eriksen.

The company has already completed upwards of 40 buildings in the U.S.

And projects in progress include two of Kaiser Permanente's California hospitals, and the University of California, Davis Medical Center.

Yajima's brace has proven popular for hospitals, says Eriksen, which must remain functional no time to shut down for retrofit or repair after earthquakes.

Because the brace is an integral part of the design of a building's structure,Yajima works with builders at or before the design stage.

Then it builds the Unbonded Braces to custom- fit the building.

The braces average about 14 feet long,weigh about 4,000 pounds, and have a 250,000- to one-million-pound strength.

For one job, says Eriksen,Yajima manufactured 192 braces, in 90 different sizes and variations; for another, the company made 262 braces, done 110 ways.

The braces are also used in retrofits.

The eight-story Wallace F.

Bennett Federal Building in Salt Lake City took 344 braces in its retrofit.

The three-story University of California, Berkeley ,Hildebrand Hall required just 36.

Nippon Steel Corporation owns the patent on the Unbonded Brace, and though Nippon is Yajima USA's primary customer, the plant has plans to scoop up a few local customers as well.

It's got a new piece of equipment, a $450,000 Khotaki Plasma Cutter with the capacity to cut steel accurately to 1 3/4 inches.

It's the only one on the West Coast, says Eriksen.

That, plus the plant's 30-inch Amada bandsaw, drill equipment and cranes, puts it in the running as a large-building subcontractor.