112 CHAPTER 9 In the mid-1980s, Western States made its first sale to the People's Republic of China, with a large order of bagasse depithers and washers. Not long after, the company inked a 1987 agreement with IHI, a Japanese manufacturer of continuous decanting solid bowl centrifuges, to manufacture the stationary parts and purchase the rotating elements for these machines, which are widely used in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries. However, sales proved to be disappointing. In 1987, Metric Manufacturing and Sales Limited was licensed to manufacture equipment for the Australia and New Zealand markets, and a year later, Western States developed the CONCENT vertical continuous centrifuge for the chemical industry.