HEADWORKS Live at WEFTEC

Live from the Los Angeles Convention Center its Water Online Radio! Co-Owner and Senior Vice President, Gerald Seidl, sits down with Todd Schnick and Todd Youngblood to discuss the latest and greatest at Headworks Inc. This interview covers it all: large projects on the horizon, new products launches, and what the BIO in Headworks BIO really means.

The transcription for the interview is below:

Todd Schnick: We're back broadcasting live from the Los Angeles Convention Center and the trade show floor of WEFTEC. I am Todd Schnick, joined by my co-host, Todd Youngblood. Todd, we are deep into hour four and having a grand time.

Todd Youngblood: A grand time. The only problem I have is the cafeteria, which is 30 feet behind me, just fired up lunch. It's tormenting and tempting us and torturing us.

Todd Schnick: The aromas are good.

Todd Youngblood: It's just not fair.

Todd Schnick: I'm not turning around. But we have a good time ahead of us. Our next guest is going to be a lot of fun. His name is Gerald Seidl. He is the co-owner and Senior Vice President of Headworks Bio. Welcome to WaterOnline Radio.

Gerald Seidl: Good afternoon. I'm fine, thank you.

Todd Schnick: Good. Before we get into a conversation, Gerald, why don't you take a few minutes and just walk us through a little about you, your background and some of the work that you're doing for Headworks?

Gerald Seidl: Well, I'm one of the founders of Headworks. We started our company about 17 years ago, originally in Austria. You may realize my accent's still not total Texan.

After targeting the American market, originally from Austria, we moved the company when we got more successful and had to move the manufacturing over to the US.

In the meantime, first we focused on the mechanical side, so we brought in new technology on the screening side. We called the main products Mahr Bar Screen. Over the years, we've made it into the most successful screen in the U.S. and today it's one of the type of screens which you see in all the big plants in the entire world.

Certain copies proved that we really were successful. We are still working fine and we have, even this year, we just got recently a number of very big orders from Alberta, [inaudible 1:580] Gold Bar, the largest plant in Alberta. If you go here in Los Angeles, go to the Tillman Plant, they have had our screens for many years. They are thrilled and tickled to death. So yeah, life is good.

Todd Schnick: Gerald, typically when we talk about moving manufacturing operations, we talk about moving out of the U.S. and you moved in. Could you talk about little bit more about what factors caused you to make that decision?

Gerald Seidl: One thing, don't forget this is quite a number of years ago. At that time, American was not so much used to import equipment. The Internet was not so proliferate and basically a lot of the companies or utilities were burned.

When we started to get our first orders, some people came to say, "I really like your product, but I want it made in the U.S." Service is here, manufacturing is here, support is here, so this was really the reason we had to move it here. Today we're very proud. We outsource equipment.

It's all done in the U.S., but basically all the components which we can find in the U.S. are from the U.S. I think that's something. We create jobs here, which sometimes we feel is not enough really, there's a lot of talk about jobs.

We create them and sadly, some cases people say, "Well, I'll give you the order if you're the cheapest." We say then well then some foreign jobs get created. It still doesn't matter. So I think that, sometimes, the fate of our own destiny losing orders for doing a good thing.

Todd Schnick: Gerald, you pulled a little component out of your pocket just before the show, and you put it back in too quickly. Could you just talk a little bit about what that thing is and the value that it brings to your customers?

Gerald Seidl: The second part of our company is called actually Headworks Bio. A few years ago we decided we have to expand in order to grow. After discussing what way to go, we decided we would go into process technology.

But at the same time, we acquired a company in Canada called Hydroxyl, which is one of the two, basically the two main founding companies who develop next to AnoxKaldnes the MBBR technology, standing for moving bed biofilm reactor.

You introduced, so called media, little plastic cubes with a lot of inside walls into the waste water and simplify, create more living room for the bacteria. So you shrink dramatically the size of a traditional plant.

Todd Schnick: That's got to have a pretty significant impact on cost, just reducing that footprint that you mentioned.

Gerald Seidl: It can have a lot of significant cost implications. And you have multiple variations where it benefits. On one hand, if you build a new plant it is small, so we also do besides large municipal big plants, we do small compact systems.

We have just recently done for an office complex where the whole plant is in the basement. A traditional plant could never fit there. High end hotels use it. Labor camps overseas. So the footprint here is helpful.

On the other end, naturally you also can retrofit or increase the treatment capacity of existing plants without needing more footprints. Because many plants were, many years ago, built at the edge of a city. In the meantime, they're surrounded by houses so to increase capacity is a real problem. Same with affluent quality.

Todd Schnick: Gerald, what's helped the thousands of professionals in the Water Online community better understand exactly how you serve your customers? I understand you have a couple of projects and stories yet you want to share with the audience about some of the work that you've done.

Gerald Seidl: Well, the one thing we often say is go and talk to our references. That's the best sales argument we can have. We have, on the mechanical side, we have way over thousands of installations and they are from Hong Kong, Singapore, in some of the major plants in Europe, to the U.S. and South America.

On the biological side, for instance, we have many people know cruise ships and many are wondering what happens on cruise ships. A lot of the audience might know now last year it launched the two largest cruise ships in the world, The Oasis of the Sea and The Allure of the Sea.

Those ships are outfitted with our system. So all the wastewater, dirty water, gray water, kitchen water, is treated with us. We're providing the complete systems. It's a 9,000 people city with BOD over a thousand with is three or four times more than a traditional, normal municipality would have.

Todd Schnick: I know two radio hosts that would love to test those filter systems on those boats.

Gerald Seidl: Let's talk about it.

Todd Schnick: Ok. You're on. If there is such a thing as a high tech industry with advance after advance coming out of the laboratories and the R&D operations, talk a little bit about new products and new services that you're going to bring to market over the next year or two.

Gerald Seidl: We obviously, on the biological side, it's a much more advanced area, and we're working with universities together. We're working in our own offices and laboratory in developing and proceeding with refining the processes.

On the mechanical side, it's sometimes a slower paced process, for instanced we just launched, and you can go on our website and see a nice video a new version of our Screwpactor.

We call it HD, Screwpactor HD, which is usable for big CSO flows or plants where you get a lot of debris and you can see there are tires are torn up or enormous amounts of leaves, solids. So this is an ongoing process obviously otherwise a standstill is meaning you're falling back.

Todd Schnick: Yeah. Bad news if you're standing still, that's for sure.

Todd Youngblood: Alright, Gerald, I hate to say it, but we're out of time. Before we let you go, share with the audience how they can contact Headworks Bio and learn more about the good work that you're doing.

Gerald Seidl: The easiest is to go to our website. It's www.headworksusa.com. From there you see videos, can download brochures, have all the contacts, or just give us a call and ask for Gerald Seidl and I will pass it to the right people.

Todd Youngblood: Gerald Seidl. It was a pleasure having you. Thanks for joining us today.

Gerald Seidl: Thank you very much.

Todd Schnick: Thank you Gerald. Ok, that wraps this segment. On behalf of Todd Youngblood, I'm Todd Schnick. WaterOnline Radio will be right back.