Maryland Company Brings Business to S.H. Bell
EAST LIVERPOOL, Ohio -- S.H. Bell Co. and U.S. Silica Holdings Inc. of Maryland announced a partnership Wednesday that would open a new silica sand storage building at Bell's transload site here.
U.S. Silica will ship its product to East Liverpool by river barge and railcar to support oil and gas customers in the Utica and Marcellus shale plays. Bell will store the materials in a 32,000-square-foot building, said its vice president of operations, Rusty Davis. Bell received its first shipment in July. Silica sand is a specialized mineral used in hydraulic fracturing.
"We anticipate moving about 2,000 tons a week," Davis said. "It's what we've been averaging right now. Hopefully it'll increase."
Bell needed to modify the building and handling equipment for the work as well as provide additional training to its workforce, Davis said. Trucks move the product from the transload site to the drilling customers in the area. Bell has 28 storage buildings on the 90-acre transload site that which features access to barges, railroad and trucks.
"We handle a lot of different products for the steel industry, factory industry and some semi-finished steel products," Davis said. "Sand is a new additional product to our whole line of products that we handle."
So far this year, U.S. Silica has opened nine "frack sand" transload structures, said its CEO, Bryan Shinn. The company is working to move its point-of-sale closer to the shale plays, "providing convenience and flexibility for our customers," Shinn said.
"We are excited to have S.H. Bell as a strategic service provider as we further expand our supply chain reach," Shinn said in a prepared statement. "This is a prime location for a new facility and is another example of how U.S. Silica is leveraging our flexible logistics to bring high quality products closer to market."
"This is an ideal location for distributing frack sand into the Utica and Marcellus shale areas," said the president of Bell, John Bell. "S.H. Bell Co. will continue to be an active participant in the oil and gas industry and a strong supporter of job creation and growth of the local economy."
U.S. Silica is the second-largest domestic producer of commercial silica, its website says. It also process ground and raw silica sand for a variety of industrial and specialty products end markets that include glass, fiberglass, foundry molds, municipal filtration and recreational uses.
Since 1933, the family-owned Bell company has provided terminals to handle materials shipped by barges, railroads and trucks as well as storage, processing, packaging and record-keeping services for the metals, oil and gas industries. The company is headquartered in Pittsburgh.
Copyright 2012 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.