Turblex cleans up via waste-water treatment

Turblex Inc.

Address: 1635 W. Walnut St., Springfield, MO 65806

Top executive: Guy Mace, president; Peter Miller, vice president and operations manager

2003 revenues: $22.4 million

2004 revenues: $31.6 million

2005 revenues: $45.2 million

3-year growth: 102 percent

Employees: 77

People who aren’t looking for the Turblex facility at 1635 W. Walnut St. will probably drive right past it. People looking for examples of Turblex’s work locally won’t be able to find them. But the company’s 77 employees are definitely having an effect in cities across the country.

The company, started by Guy Mace in 1988 in partnership with a Danish company called HV-Turbo, makes compressors that produce large volumes of low-pressure air. The compressors are used most commonly in municipal waste-water treatment and solid waste removal systems.

Mace said that when he started his company, he had modest expectations.

“We figured that if we could get $5 (million) or $6 million of business in the first five or six years, we’d be a great success,” Mace said. “We had that at the end of the first year – and it took off from there.”

Take off it has – the company posted 2005 revenues of $45.2 million, up 43 percent from 2004 and 102 percent from 2003.

While the Danish partner company has since been purchased by German manufacturing group AG Kühnle, Kopp & Kausch, Turblex itself is still locally owned. The company gets the compressor from the HV-Turbo plant and builds it into a larger structure, which includes mechanical and electronic systems.

“The compressor makes up about 25 percent of the overall package,” Mace said. “We probably have the largest group of engineers in the area here – we have 30 or 35 engineers here. It takes us a long time to engineer these large, complex packages.”

The systems don’t come cheap, either. Mace said systems cost several hundred thousand dollars to build and install, but their efficiency makes them well worth the cost.

“I sent out a quote to a company in Hawaii recently – a very small plant – and we’re going to save that plant more than $200,000 a year in operating costs,” he said. “It’s going to cost them about a quarter of a million (dollars) to put our machine in, but the savings will pay for it in less than two years.”

Savings come from the air compression system, which Mace said is up to 50 percent more efficient than those of competitors.

It was good enough for the public works department in Lincoln, Neb. That city recently upgraded two of its waste-water treatment facilities, including the installation of Turblex systems.

Gary Brandt, the city’s utilities coordinator, said the capabilities of the new facility required a better system.

“We went to advanced treatment for nitrogen removal, but that requires a lot of air in the treatment system,” Brandt said. “We think we’re getting the best package in terms of efficiency in working with Turblex, and just the piece of equipment and its efficiency in the unit for supplying the needed air for the treatment process.”

While Brandt said it’s too early to tell how much the system is saving the city – both systems came on line in the last year – efficiency was definitely important, as the city spent almost $70 million on the two facilities.

Those kinds of renovations are not uncommon across the country, according to Mace. He said many cities built new treatment facilities in the 1960s and ‘70s, and the natural lifespan of those facilities is leading to a need for new equipment.

That spells good news for Turblex, which has doubled its sales force since December and has plans in the works for a new building on its current site to accommodate the growth.

The sales department is an important part of the company – especially with the aggressive sales techniques the company uses.

“We have a take-no-prisoners attitude when it comes to selling our equipment,” Mace said. “When a waste-water treatment plant is built, they’ll write up a set of specifications to put the equipment in. It’s our job to get the engineer to write our equipment into the specs. And we work very hard at that.”