FilterBoxx Packaged Water Solutions

Love that dirty water  FilterBoxx Packaged Water Solutions designs and builds skid-mounted, portable, packaged water and wastewater solutions for drilling, mining and pipeline camps, specializing in remote and harsh climate environments. Ric Larson finds out more.  Back in the mid-1960s a Los AngelesÔÇôbased garage-rock band known as The Standells rose to prominence with their hit song ÔÇ£Dirty Water,ÔÇØ which reached #11 on the Billboard charts in June 1966. The title referred to the Charles River in Boston, which was notoriously polluted at the time, and the song is still played today by BostonÔÇÖs major sports teams after home game victories. It could also have been the theme song for FilterBoxx Packaged Water Solutions of Calgary, Alberta, had the company been around back then.┬á┬á┬á┬á FilterBoxx is a leading provider of packaged water treatment, wastewater treatment and industrial water treatment systems for industrial, municipal, resort and aboriginal clients throughout Canada, as well as systems operating in the United States and providing clean water for Canadian troops fighting in Afghanistan. The harsher the climate and working conditions, the better. FilterBoxx welcomes challenging environments and specializes in working at difficult, remote locations. The companyÔÇÖs client list includes blue-chip companies such as Petro Canada, Shell Canada, Conoco Phillips, Suncor Energy, and EnCana, to name just a few. Founded in 2001 by Kevin Slough and Troy Lupul, FilterBoxx made its name by securing a contract with EnCana, a leading natural gas and oil company in Canada. EnCana was treating the wastewater from its projects in-house until it ran into environmental regulatory issues, which required the company to haul waste material off-site, resulting in unforeseen budgetary expenditures. This provided an opening for Slough and Lupul, who were wastewater treatment consultants at the time, to start FilterBoxx. The company boldly stated that it would pay all of EnCanaÔÇÖs expenses for hauling waste material off-site if its wastewater treatment system could not solve EnCanaÔÇÖs on-site environmental issues. FilterBoxx succeeded, and from that point on the company has experienced unprecedented growth and economic success, due to its technological innovations and to providing its clients with a wide range of integral services that include process design, engineering, procurement, equipment integration, fabrication, pilot testing and installation of packaged water, wastewater and industrial wastewater treatment systems. The companyÔÇÖs potable water (clean drinking water) systems can be configured for between 50 and 60,000 people and range from 2 to 2,800 gallons per minute, depending upon needs and the facilities required. These include desalination; green sands, a filtration system that uses sand to filter iron, sulphur, hydrogen and manganese out of drinking water; reverse osmosis, a process that works by forcing a solution through a membrane that retains the solution but allows the solvent to pass through to the other side; nano-filtration, a fairly new process that is used with surface water and fresh groundwater for the removal of natural organic matter and synthetic organic matter; and clarifiers, which clear up water clouding due to biological blooms, chemicals or particulates. FilterBoxx wastewater treatment systems can accommodate from 20 to 3,000 people, and its larger systems can be expanded to handle anywhere between 500 and 800 additional people. These include several types of filtration applications, such as activated sludge, a process that was developed in the early part of the 20th century in which pure oxygen is added to a conglomeration of industrial wastewater or treated sewage; when combined with other organisms, it develops a biological floc (lumpy or fluffy mass), thereby reducing the organic content of the wastewater. Other solutions offered by the company are: membrane bioreactors (MBR), consisting of a membrane with a suspended growth bioreactor; submerged fixed-film filtration, a biological distribution system consisting of a series of vertical chambers adjoining each other with corrugated packings that, when air or oxygenating gas is added to the bottom of alternating chambers, creates an upflow of material in these chambers and a downflow in the remaining chambers, resulting in the contaminant waste being biologically converted by microorganisms that are present on the packings and in all the chambers; and the Lamella Plate, a separation system for either solids or liquids that uses the force of gravity. The company has impressive credentials in the treatment of process water and industrial waste. It has systems for the treatment of brackish water, which has more salinity than fresh water but not as much as seawater; de-silting of river water; SAGD (steam-assisted gravity drainage) water re-use, primarily used by heavy oil recovery facilities for the separation of water from the oil that is recovered from the well; and boiler feed and enhanced oil recovery applications. All these systems can be custom-designed to fit the requirements of each individual client. Through its Combo Energy Services division, FilterBoxx offers smaller companies an aggressive pricing plan in which they can lease a packaged water treatment system, including a 20-man crew, for 60 to 90 days, for a price as low as $300 per day, thus allowing clients with smaller budgets the opportunity to take advantage of the companyÔÇÖs expertise and state-of-the-art products at an affordable cost. The rapid rise of FilterBoxx has not gone unnoticed by Canadian Business Online, which places the company at number 19 out of 100 companies in its 2009 power rankings of the fastest-growing Canadian businesses. From 2003 to 2008 FilterBoxx has shown astonishing revenue growth, with 2009 revenue of C$40 million and projected revenues to exceed C$120 million by 2015. While FilterBoxx continues to experience phenomenal growth and handsome profit margins, the company never loses focus on ways to improve its packaged treatment systems, as well as developing other technological innovations that will aid the company in its plans for future expansion into other markets, including Asia.