OMI Solution Brings Odor Under Control
Chuck Timcik, director of sales and marketing for OMI Industries, sat down with Water Online Radio for this live interview from the show floor at WEFTEC 2011 in Los Angeles. Timcik discusses OMI’s odor neutralizing product and its benefits to wastewater treatment facilities and communities. Listen or read on to learn more.
Todd Schnick: We're back, broadcasting live from the Los Angeles Convention Center and the tradeshow floor of WEFTEC. I am Todd Schnick, joined by my colleague, Todd Youngblood, kicking off hour eight.
Todd Youngblood: Eight?!
Todd Schnick: It has been a great day.
Todd Youngblood: How on Earth did eight hours just swing by that quickly?
Todd Schnick: I don’t know. It has been so much fun. I cannot believe that we are starting the eighth hour.
Todd Youngblood: Unbelievable.
Todd Schnick: And I have to tell you, we have the perfect guest to kick off the eighth hour. He is the Vice President and Director of Technology for OMI Industries, Chuck Timcik. Welcome to Water Online Radio.
Chuck Timcik: Thank you for having me.
Todd Schnick: It is great to have you. Before we get into a conversation, Chuck, why don’t you take a few minutes to just walk us through who you are, your background, and what you are doing with OMI Industries?
Chuck Timcik: As you said, I am vice president and technical director for OMI. Our business is odor control – that is all we do. We’re here for the wastewater industry, both municipal and industrial.
We go into a number of different industries, but here we are focused on wastewater. In fact, from here I am going to an ISSA show in Las Vegas that works with the institutional odor control world outside of wastewater.
Todd Schnick: Help the audience understand – give me a couple example projects that you do that have to do with odor control.
Chuck Timcik: Just last year at this show we were awarded the “Best New Product” by one of the environmental magazines for something we call a Spray Gel. A Spray Gel is used for topical applications. It was designed for topical application onto wastewater sludge.
The original user was transporting wastewater sludge from somewhere in New Jersey, I think, to a landfill states away – two, three, four states away – and it stunk.
So odor control being our business, we did come up with a Spray Gel application where it is topically applied via nozzles to the sludge sitting in the trailer of a semi-tractor trailer transport and then carried away. And it suppressed the emissions of the odors from the sludge all the way to the landfill, and to the unload.
Todd Youngblood: In that specific example, there was a specific problem and you came up with a product to help deal with that. Is that typical? Do you have to examine a specific case and come up with a very specific product to deal with it, or do most of your products take care of most issues across all your client base?
Chuck Timcik: Our products…we have a family – call it fundamental designs – that we will then modify as needed. There isn’t a whole lot of modification necessary. What we are doing is we are using an environmentally friendly, biodegradable approach, using botanical oils as the active ingredients.
It’s typical and quite common, in this industry and a number of industries, to use masking agents to cover up the odors. So you do that – let’s say you have a cherry mask laid on top of wastewater stink; so you have a cherry stink.
Our product is a neutralizer, an odor absorbent – it makes it so that you don’t smell the wastewater or whatever the process we are dealing with. It is just a neutral environment. The Spray Gel was designed to lay on top, so it encapsulates.
We have talked to some people earlier today who are dealing in the rendering world, and there’s wastewater…what’s interesting about wastewater is that it’s everywhere. Every process out there, it seems, has a wastewater facility.
They are not going to send their effluent to the wastewater plant before they treat it in one fashion or another. All these industrial wastewater operations have odor issues, and the rendering plants happen to deal with fats, meat, scraps, restaurant greases, and things of that nature.
We found through activity – actually the dog food world – that we were not able to control the odors of all of the fats that were coming out of there. So I went about making some changes, I had some brainstorms, and we came up with a product we called the “G” product, for grease. And so today I was talking to some people about dealing with grease odor control and their processes. It is just all over the map.
Todd Schnick: Chuck, you talking about all these different industries and types of odors that you are controlling, leads me to want come back to a comment that we talked about just before the show.
You are the first individual here, in the whole two days we have been here, that when we asked about the economy you just sort of shrugged your shoulders. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Chuck Timcik: I was walking by and I heard you ask the previous interviewee. I heard you say something like everybody you have spoken to has suffered from the recent economy.
We did not. Our business…last April, when we were talking in our planning meetings about the previous year, the industrial division was criticized because it did not grow more than it grew.
Back in ’08, during our April planning meeting – we had a gloom and doom meeting, modifying the plan for the year because of what was going on, and the economy didn’t touch us.
Now we do have other divisions that go under the consumer and commercial world – like I am going tomorrow to Vegas. But the industrial division has grown throughout these economic times and, like I said, criticized for not growing more. And our international business has really been shoring us up. A lot of that isn’t necessarily wastewater – it is industrial.
Todd Youngblood: I am just curious…I think of a wastewater treatment plant going down, for example. I mean, that is a serious health hazard if I’m dumping sludge into the river, so to speak. And I think about odor control, and I’m thinking that may be unpleasant, but I’m not sure it steps up to the same kind of a health hazard. So, economically, what I am leading to is, what kind of value in terms of dollars and cents, or how do you justify the investment in the kind of things you are doing, given that?
Chuck Timcik: I talked to a guy back in the mid-’90s who was a superintendent of a wastewater plant. I had heard that that plant had odor control issues, and I tracked him down and I said, “I hear you have odor problems.” And he says, “This is a wastewater plant. Wastewater plants stink. I don't have any problems.”
Well, that doesn’t fly today. It didn't probably fly back then either. But the neighbors…you just can’t have the neighbors complaining. And the wastewater plants – the older wastewater plants – were put out in the tulies somewhere, and then the population grew towards them.
There is a plant up the coast a way, where they built a whole new plant adjacent to the old plant, then abandoned the old plant, and they had commercial properties that had been already put in around it from the previous economies. And they put a significant, serious collection system on it for odor control – scrubbers – and still the headworks were smelling up the neighborhood and the neighbors were complaining.
So the value is in keeping the neighbors off their backs. Nobody wants to buy our product. It’s an expense item, whether it’s a municipality or whether it’s industrial – it’s an expense item.
So they only want to do this if they have to, and that usually comes from neighborhood complaints. And something else is, once the neighbors start complaining, it’s hard to get them to stop, even if you fix the problem. Did that answer your question?
Todd Schnick: Yeah.
Chuck Timcik: I mean, it’s not an economical response; it’s not quantitative as much as it’s qualitative.
Todd Schnick: Oftentimes, it’s probably like a political solution. We have a situation, so we need to bring in a solution quickly to address these consumer complaints. Interesting.
Todd Youngblood: I can see a real estate developer, for example, would be very interested in having that problem solved before they are going to invest in building housing, or commercial, or industrial, or whatever.
Chuck Timcik: From what I have observed, they don’t pay any attention. Once they build…they build a million-dollar house, it’s a half-mile from the wastewater plant; or a two-million-dollar house. Then the people buying the house go, “what’s that smell?”
Todd Schnick: They are not happy about it. Then they go complain to the city council. Chuck, OMI is exhibiting here at WEFTEC, yes?
Chuck Timcik: Yes we are.
Todd Schnick: Walk us through…why are you here? What are your principle goals in attending an event like this?
Chuck Timcik: Actually, we are booth 440, in case anyone wants to go. Come visit.
Todd Schnick: 440.
Chuck Timcik: We’re here for lead generation. This is a big show for us. The industrial division only does a handful of shows. This is – as far as the national shows – this is probably the largest show that we do on an annual basis. So we are here looking for people who have odor control problems at their facilities.
We have giveaways over there, which are little samples of our products that you can spray on your eyes, and spray on your clothes, and works at the house, and wherever.
But the whole intention is to introduce the Ecosorb product line to those people who have a need for odor control solutions. And a lot of people in this industry know of us, because Ecosorb has been around since about 1989, something like that. Now we have taken it a long way since then.
Todd Schnick: Do you have any products that help stinky radio show hosts?
Chuck Timcik: Yes I do. In fact, I have some spray bottles at the booth that I am going to bring back down here, just for you guys.
Todd Schnick: You have no idea, Chuck, how much I appreciate that offer.
Chuck Timcik: You have no idea the stories I have about the samples that are picked up at the shows and what they are used for.
Todd Schnick: No, no…the FCC is going to be down on our heads. What does the next three to five years look like for OMI?
Chuck Timcik: We are growing. In fact, the industrial division is understaffed right now. We are looking for some sales people, but we are pretty selective. We are looking for people that walk through walls and, actually, a senior guy and a junior guy.
So we’re growing. I know that more feet on the ground means more business for us. We have to deal with these leads, and we’re knocking them down as best as we can. We have no plans for anything but growth.
Todd Youngblood: Where do folks go to pursue those business career opportunities?
Chuck Timcik: Well, you can go directly to our website. This will probably make my director of sales crazy, but you can go to our website, which is www.omi-industries.com. And then there is a Contact Us section – a page there where you can send something, and we will be taking a look at them.
Todd Youngblood: And I don’t think your director of sales is going to be angry with you.
Chuck Timcik: I make him angry a lot. I am hoping to get a copy of this so I can let him listen to it.
Todd Schnick: Outstanding. We’ll definitely provide that.
Todd Youngblood: We will make that happen.
Todd Youngblood: Chuck, I hate to say it, but we are out of time.
Chuck Timcik: Come on, I am enjoying this.
Todd Schnick: So are we.
Todd Youngblood: There is an extra fee for you to continue.
Chuck Timcik: Okay.
Todd Schnick: It was great to have you. One more time, share with the audience how they can learn more about the work that OMI is doing.
Chuck Timcik: The website is www.omi-industries.com. We’re at 440 down in the South Hall. You can contact us through the website. If you are here at the show, you can stop by the booth.
Todd Schnick: Chuck Timcik, it was a real pleasure to have you. Thanks for joining us today.
Chuck Timcik: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Todd Schnick: Thanks, Chuck. That wraps this segment. On behalf of Todd Youngblood, I am Todd Schnick, Water Online Radio. We will be right back.