Universal Iceblast set to clean up
By Sandy Dunham, LocalBusiness.com
Mar 15, 2001 04:37 PM ET
KIRKLAND, Wash., March 15 (LocalBusiness.com) -- Universal Ice Blast Inc. has signed a marketing agreement with Lake Oswego Insulation Corp. that is expected to help both companies clean up.
Kirkland-based Universal, founded in 1995, is the world's leading manufacturer of crystalline ice blast equipment.
Ice blasting is a nontoxic, nonabrasive cleaning process that uses tap water, compressed air and electricity for industrial cleaning jobs using a "scrub and flush" process that shoots ice at the target and displaces contaminants. When the ice melts after impact, it flushes away the debris.
Universal manufacturers the ice-blast machines and offers technical development to customize and integrate the machines into manufacturing lines.
Lake Oswego is a 25-year-old Portland company that specializes in asbestos and mold abatement remediation in the Pacific Northwest. The company, whose clients include AT&T, Portland General Electric and Fred Meyer, also provides lead-based paint removal and PCB ballast and lighting removal and recycling.
Partnership seeds
When Universal supplied Lake Oswego with a successful system for cleaning asbestos from high-rise buildings earlier this year, the seeds of a partnership were planted.
Universal Chairman Rory Clarke said the exclusive market agreement will benefit everyone involved.
"They get access to a new technology on an exclusive basis; we get their business experience and customer relations," he wrote in an e-mail. "We rent equipment and provide initial training and market support; they get to put in manpower and mark up the equipment."
Financially, Clarke said, the agreement "gets us into a rental market where we can have above-market returns. Universal still has a hold on the technology and equipment and can earn long-term cash flows from its asset base. These assets are built at our cost and also the payback is less than one year if we can rent at 75 percent utilization."
Broader prospects
While this agreement covers only the Pacific Northwest, it also fits into a larger strategy for Universal on two fronts.
"We can build an asset base that would be attractive to other markets, such as lead paint abatement," Clarke wrote. "This also has implications in Europe and Japan."
Universal, with a fixed base of 10 employees, already has a broad reach, with operations in Toledo, Ohio; distributors in Australia, the Netherlands and Japan; and pending ice-blast technology patents in Europe, Japan and Canada.
The marketing agreement also forwards the company's plan to develop and expand a rental fleet, said Universal President Sam Visaisouk.
"We offer a full-service rental program, which includes training, maintenance and set up of the equipment," Visaisouk said in a press release. "We plan to expand these efforts over the next three years."
Clarke did not disclose terms of the agreement, other than to say there are options to renew "if all goes well for both parties." |
