2 Soviet Firms, MagneTek Join on Dam Project

MagneTek Inc. will announce today that it has signed its first contract to install a hydropower turbine and generator system in the United States under a unique joint venture with two Soviet companies.

The installation at a dam in Tacoma, Wash., will mark the first time that a major U.S.-Soviet joint venture markets products in the United States instead of the Soviet Union.

The $3.6-million contract is at the Tacoma Public Utilities District’s new Wynoochee power plant.

Los Angeles-based MagneTek’s Soviet partners, Electrosila and Leningradsky Metallichesky Zavod, will build the 15.5-megawatt system at their home bases in Leningrad. It will be installed in Tacoma soon after the Wynoochee plant is completed about Jan. 1, 1993.

MagneTek is the leader in the rebuilding of hydro, coal, natural gas and oil-fired generators in the United States. But it has no factories that build the huge turbines that hydropower plants use to convert the mechanical energy of falling water into electricity.

On Aug. 1, MagneTek announced that it was teaming up with the Soviet companies so that it can offer a full line of turbine-generator manufacturing and repair services to the American hydropower industry.

MagneTek had $37.3 million in profit on sales of $1.1 billion last year.