In this international episode of the OnAire Podcast, we sit down with our partners from Osprey, based in France, to explore a powerful truth: combustible dust control is misunderstood by regulators, insurers, and even safety professionals on both sides of the Atlantic.
Who Should Watch This Episode:
- Safety officers, plant managers, and EHS leaders
- Insurance auditors and risk assessors
- Professionals in grain, feed, wood, tobacco, paper, recycling, and other high-risk industries
If you’re a regulatory official, insurance decision-maker, or plant safety leader, and you’ve ever questioned the role of fans in a combustible dust environment, this conversation is essential. The idea that “fans cause dust clouds – not control them” is a myth. And in today’s risk-averse world, myths can lead to missed opportunities, higher costs, and increased hazards.
Episode Transcript:
All right, here we are once again in the OnAire Podcast studio, but not really in the studio. We’re actually going international today. But we’re not international.
We’re not. We’re bringing in some folks from international.
But we brought international here. So, we’ve got Mark and Jana from the Ritters organization over in France. You guys have been partners with us for like eight years now. Which has been pretty exciting, to have you guys along for the ride. And actually, more than just along for the ride, you guys have been carrying us on your dust journey over in Europe. And you guys have been paving the way for us, and we are so excited to actually have you here at home once again, so welcome.
Thank you for having us.
Yeah, I was talking to Jana when they came in this morning: my second week here, she and Christoph and Valentin, and the rest of the group was in here. Mark wasn’t here yet. So, this is his first time out here. But it’s just crazy to think it was that long ago since we’ve had them out.
Yeah.
It’s been an amazing partnership, and you guys are incredible to work with, and how you treat your customers and deal with them, it very much aligns with how we do that here in the States with our customers here. And so, I think it’s been a great partnership. So, tell us about the Ritters and what you guys do. Because you guys do more than just fans, but tell us about that.
Yeah, do you want to start?
I can start, yeah. So basically we are coming, let’s say our father, he created the company, I think, more or less 30 years ago now?
Yeah, 2001, so 25 years ago.
So, he was working for another company, Procter & Gamble. And he was responsible for the air systems there. So, Procter & Gamble, they are making some diapers, and he was responsible for the air systems within Procter & Gamble. So basically, a diaper production line, there are many fans at different locations, either to hold the product in place, or to do some dust control along the line. And so all this air needs to be sent to a central dust collection system. And basically, they are using what we call a rotary drum filter system. So, he was responsible for this, I don’t know how many years he worked at Proctor.
Like eight or ten years.
Yeah, and so after this he got approached by one of the companies who are doing these dust filtration systems It’s called Osprey. It’s also an American company, and so he started to work for this company 25 or 26 years ago. That’s also the time where we moved from Germany to France. And then, so he was always working in this dusty environment, and things like this, fighting against the dust in the production halls. And this is where I think yeah, 2018? It was actually one of our customers from Osprey who told him, “Hey, take a look at SonicAire. They are doing great stuff over there” taking care of cleaning all the facilities. Not only in the hygienic and tissue production facilities…
But other industries as well. Yeah, everywhere where it’s dusty. So basically, Christoph was with Osprey taking care of the dust that’s inside the process. But even if you have a good dust control system, and that’s valid for every industry, you still have some dust that escapes that process unfortunately, and that’s going to accumulate. And so, when he saw the SonicAire fans, I think he was very impressed by how good they were working. And there was that one customer that he had that was really promoting the fans because he was very enthusiastic about them. But at the time, he was alone traveling all the time while we were growing up, all over Europe and Middle East. And so, he turned down representing SonicAire because he just didn’t have the time. But then I think in 2017, Valentin and I joined him, and so for the first time he wasn’t alone anymore. So, it was a little bit of a mentoring process. So, for him it was difficult to have somebody to delegate to at the beginning. It was quite difficult. So we called him the total control freak.
*Laughs*
He would look over every email before we would be allowed to like send it out to a customer. But as we were yeah growing, then Mark came along in 2018, 19? So, as we were growing, we said, well, maybe we should take another look at the SonicAire fan. Because we know that that you guys were looking to expand into Europe, and we thought that this was a good time for us to also represent another company. And since we thought that our existing customers in the hygiene and tissue industry would benefit from that, I think that was like the starting point of our collaboration. And then we came to visit you guys like in 2018. We came here at SonicAire, but we also got the chance to visit some of your customers around here. And I think that was very convincing for us to see with our own eyes how efficient these fans are, and we definitely saw an application in some of our customers at that time in the hygiene industry. And so that’s how the collaboration started. And for us It’s been amazing also, because with SonicAire we get to see all kind of different industries. It’s super interesting to go into different production facilities. For me it’s like, you know the show How It’s Made?
Yeah, yeah.
So it’s like, whenever there’s a new process or so, it’s always super interesting, and most of the time people are very happy to show how they actually produce things. So I think that’s very interesting. But then the real pain point for them is the dust accumulation. So, luckily we’re able to help them with SonicAire. And yeah, I think it’s been a very good collaboration over the last years with you guys.
I’d say so, yeah.
So Brad, our founder, was familiar with Osprey. He had worked with him and his days of air filtration years ago, different types of filtration, textiles industry and things like that. And so, he kind of checked around with the Osprey guys and said hey, what about this Christoph fella? Yeah, and it was all thumbs up from there. And we appreciate their kind of partnership in that way, too.
And there’s a lot of similarities between two companies. Because Osprey and SonicAire are both family-owned, let’s say smaller companies, mid-sized companies, approximately the same amount of people, between 40 and 50 people. And so we recognize a lot of values Between SonicAire and Osprey as well. So for us, it’s been I think great working with both companies and, I mean, SonicAire customers can benefit from Osprey solutions sometimes, and Osprey customers can benefit from the SonicAire solution definitely. So, for us, it’s a good Additional product let’s say to be promoting the SonicAire fans.
Yeah, that’s awesome. Just one little sidebar real quick. Jana mentioned that Christoph was excited. I would say that’s the understatement of the century. There is nothing that Christoph is not excited about I would say.
He operates at a level 9 to 10 all the time.
Here recently, we’ve had a couple things going on with some customers, and so I’ve been on the phone almost every day with Christoph. But man, I always love talking to him because he’s so excitable and everything is an opportunity, and I just love his enthusiasm and zeal. And they were talking about this a video
But it’s positive, too. Even when there’s problems, he always has a positive…like, this is an opportunity for us to do something great for this company because they’re going to see the benefit and we’re going to go far with them.
So, Christoph, if you watch this, we love you. ❤️
And I actually have a video, I need to show it to you guys. When we left SonicAire in 2018, there’s a video of Valentin, Christoph, and myself in the car, and Christoph is like, how excited are you guys to be working with them on a scale of one to ten? And we’re like, ten!
We use the one of him at this facility tour that you did.
Exactly, the starch facility, yes, yes. He’s interviewing I think one of the operators?
Mike from Georgia. We love you too, Mike. ❤️
The disparity in that video is like gold. It’s so cool. But yeah, it’s been a great partnership, and we love working with you guys, and y’all have been doing some presentations for us because there’s a lot that you do, just from kind of like your upbringing, background, and cultural differences across the pond, where even attention to detail is just very different culturally. And so that was great hearing how you go about your processes and sell things. That’s one of the things that we want to get into. Jana helped us with a little bit with an article about a certain customer. Can you tell us a little bit about what industry that was in, and kind of what we were aiming at, and how we got there.
Yes, sure. So, this one customer, it’s a paper producing facility in Germany. They have several sites, but the one site that I visited and that we reached out to. We actually reached out to the headquarters, and they told us when we sent them a presentation about the fans, they told us, oh that one facility in southern Germany could really benefit from the fans. So, they make paper for food packaging. In Europe right now, there’s a little bit of a shift to go from plastic packaging to paper, but it’s not that easy, so I understood that when I visited them. Because they have to comply with a bunch of regulations that are like ISO certifications. And because this paper touches the food, so it has to be super clean and they have to comply with a lot of regulations, like I said. And so dust was a problem, not only from a maintenance point of view and a safety point of view, but also from a quality point of view. Because they were very worried that… this facility where we ended up installing the fans, it’s a rewinder. And so they have a huge crane to move the rolls of paper In and out of that rewinder. And so whenever they would move the crane the dust that had accumulated on the crane railing would fall down, and it could fall onto the paper as it was rewinding. And so for their customers, it was a huge quality issue that there might be dust inside the paper. On top of that, they had the usual let’s say problems that come with dust accumulations. So safety, I mean they were very worried about safety. And so their insurance company had asked them to do something about these dust accumulations. So what they did is manual cleaning which was very costly because these halls are very big, very high. So you would have to shut down the production for a while to clean all the overhead spaces. And so yeah, that’s when we came in and we did the first test installation with two fans and they were very very happy about the results. I was there during the stop-up and so they told me, “Yeah, we’ve done a phenomenal job at doing manual cleaning before we turn on the fan, so it won’t be like any of the videos you showed us. there will be no dust coming down.” I was like well, let’s see. And there was not a lot of dust. They have done a good job. But they have a lot of HVAC ducting, and the space between the HVAC duct and the ceiling is quite small, and so we ended up installing our compact fans very high up so that we can also clean that space above the HVAC ducting, and that’s where the manual cleaning crew couldn’t get to. So there was a lot of dust falling down from there. And yeah, they had these two fans running for a few months, and then they decided to equip the one full hall. So that was six more fans, eight fans in total, and the next hall. So in the end, they have 16 fans running now above two rewinders, and they are super happy about the results. I was just there a month ago just to check in, and you can really see the difference when you walk into these two halls. When you enter the halls, it’s very clear. There is no dust in suspension. Obviously, you don’t see any dust accumulations, but when you walk onto the other halls where they don’t have fans yet, you will see that it’s kind of dizzy, a little bit of dust in the air. It’s not super dirty because they do a very good job in manual cleaning since they have to comply with all these ISO certifications But still, it’s a lot of effort for them, so they’re definitely going to buy some more fans and equip these other halls as well.
That’s great. Do they have the spider problem, because we hear that a lot here in the US, that there are spiders that get up in the top of the building and build webs and things like that, and particularly with the food grade packaging and paper that’s a big problem. Because apparently these spiders, like, poop, and there’s spider poop that gets in the paper, and that’s a problem. So with the fans running, they can’t build a spider web, so they can’t eat, and so they leave. And so, that’s one thing that we’ve heard. Did you guys experience any of that, spiders?
Well, so not for that particular customer. At least it was not one of the biggest pain points for that customer. And the halls were very high, so I didn’t see spider webs, but maybe they were there. I’m sure maybe there were some spiders, but there have been other facilities.
Yes, I have some customers, they had a lot of issues with spider webs. And also another thing that I’m thinking of is in the tobacco industry with the beetles.
Yeah, tobacco beetles.
Yes, this is a big problem also, I think.
Yeah, we’re familiar with that here. This is the heart of tobacco country, right here. My dad used to work in a cigarette factory as did my grandfather, and we’ve installed some fans here at some local tobacco factories.
And we’re in Winston, Salem, which are the giants of the industry. And then, just a little side tour, you guys are going to Reidsville which was a big tobacco town, and all roads lead there somehow or another.
Hometown.
Yeah, but that’s very interesting. So, you were talking about, they did a good job manual cleaning, and so that’s something that we talked a lot about with our clients, is like, what is your housekeeping process? Here they’re like, yeah, we have one, because we got to have it, It’s got to be written down or something, but they don’t do it. So, when you’re going to facilities in Europe, do you find that they are typically doing a pretty good job of it, or?
Depends, I would say. But having done many startups of the fans, it’s astonishing for me to see, even though if they clean everything manually before, and they say, “Okay, everything is clean, switch the fans on.” Yeah, a lot of dust will still come down from the ceiling. But a lot of people do some periodical cleaning cycles.
But that’s required mostly from the insurance companies. And we’ve seen in the wood industry in particular, in Europe at least, insurance companies won’t ensure wood producers anymore against fires because it’s just too risky for them. And so that’s a big, big problem for them, because obviously they have a lot of fires, and then they have to put their own money on the table if there is a fire. And so, either the insurance company comes in very often and inspects if they respect the manual cleaning, but in the wood industry it’s almost impossible to keep up with the heavy dust load that they have. So the fans have been a great, great solution to the people in the wood industry, and we’ve had a lot of Insurance companies reach out to us actually. “Hey, we’ve seen your fans in this and that facility. They’re doing a great job” and so they ensure the customers back. I mean they insured them against fires again. So yeah, that’s been, I think a big driver, the insurance companies. And then sometimes when it’s big groups, they have a schedule that they have. Like a corporate, when they have a big safety department, they will impose a certain cleaning schedule. But then unfortunately between two cleaning cycles, sometimes there is too much dust still. And like what Mark said, even after manual cleaning, that’s what we see when we start the fans up: there is still quite a lot of dust falling down.
Some places, if there are a lot of obstructions or high machines or big ducts or so, it’s almost impossible to keep them clean just manually. There are just so many hidden corners and it’s really difficult. Without the fans, I don’t know how they could do it.
What do you think are some of the primary drivers for your customers choosing to go with SonicAire fans? Is it compliance? Is it because of just the insurance? Is it the return on investment? Because it costs so much for labor to go around and do the manual cleaning that’s not effective? Is it just a big combination of all that, or what do you think are the primary decision points?
I would say a big combination. Also, many times after an incident, many times we see also that the people are reaching out to us, again, after a small fire or small explosion. But yeah, as you said with the insurance people, either they would need to pay much more for the insurance company. But also, yeah, the pain of the manual cleaning sometimes, and also the costs.
In Europe labor is quite expensive as it is I think in the in the US, especially in Western European countries like France, Germany, UK. There are areas where it’s maybe a little bit cheaper, but still, most of the time people tell us that the fans have a great return on investment. Because the manual cleaning, they just have to keep paying for it every year or even multiple times a year. Very often that these are external companies that come in and do that. Also, like Mark said, access is a problem. So sometimes you have to even build scaffolding, or you have to have people come in I don’t know the English word for it, but they are attached with ropes and stuff, like climbers.
Repelling?
Yes, exactly. Because you just can’t put a lift there. And so that’s driving up the cost as well.
And because they need to stop the production also many times.
Yes, shutdowns. So even sometimes, if we install the fans in areas that are difficult to access, you just have to go through the pain once when you install it, but not periodically every time you have to clean. So I guess it’s a combination of all these things that drive people.
One of the things that we struggle with the most here is just getting our customers educated on, I mean, what we do, because we want to sell the product, but then also just in general. Because a lot of times they’re not even aware of the issues that they’re facing or the dangers that they might be in. Do you feel like that’s the same?
Yes, definitely. That’s the reason why, 15 years ago, our dad started a training event. So, as he was traveling to all these different customers, particularly in the hygiene and tissue industry, he realized that a lot of customers were not educated on airflow systems in general. But the combustible dust topic is very much linked to the airflow, and to filtration, and to dust control, and all that. And so, he started organizing a training, it’s called the Airflow Training, and we do that once per year in the springtime in South of France, which is really a good time to visit the South of France. It’s a nice area. And we’ve had people from all over the world coming to this training, also from the US, from South America, even from Australia, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, South Africa. And so, the purpose of that training is, it’s a two and a half day training. And we talk about the physics of airflow, how to make sure that your air systems are well-designed, well-balanced. But there’s a big part about combustible dust. So, we also have another company called Firefly. They come in and talk about their products, and they also educate people about combustible dust hazards. They supply spark detection systems. And so, for a lot of people, the safety aspect of the training is very important. Because, like you said, sometimes people don’t realize the dangers of combustible dust. So, we have a lot of slides with examples of dust explosions, pictures, videos. We don’t want to scare the people, but we want to make them aware that this could happen. And it’s not because it didn’t happen yet that it won’t. And fortunately, most of the time, if there’s a small fire or a small dust explosion, nobody gets hurt, but there have been examples where people got hurt, or even killed. And so, we want to educate the people of this hazard in this industry, particularly the hygiene and tissue industry.
So yeah, if you ever want to come visit us in the South of France, you or your customers, or anybody who’s watching, that would be our pleasure. So you can just send us an email.
How do we get signed up for that?
Yeah, sounds like we’re taking the podcast on the road.
Road trip!
We can even help, and plug some product…
Oh, yeah! Yes, we can do that. And we have, actually, also a SonicAire fan on display during that training. So, we put it on a small mounting…
Test stand.
Yeah, on a small test stand. And we run it, and we show the people, and they realize how strong it blows and how well it cleans. It’s always good, I think, for people to see the product. So, very similar to tradeshows where we would bring the fan, we do that at our trainings as well.
Love it. You mentioned Incidents, and sometimes it’s a fire or a minor explosion or something like that. And I think this morning you mentioned something about a customer that had installed fans. And so the ceiling was clean, and they had an incident at a lower level, and it wasn’t worse than it could have been because the area was covered.
I think I was mentioning that. Yeah, it was a facility in France, and they have a big shredder where they shred wood. And there was unfortunately a gas bottle that got thrown into the shredder. Yes, and so that created a big explosion. And so luckily it didn’t spread.
That’s what we talk about, secondary events. Secondary is what’s always the worst.
And I guess in recycling that’s particularly true, because unfortunately you can’t crush batteries and things like this. That would create small fires. And then if there’s dust lying around everywhere, that will be a big secondary event.
Can you talk a little bit about compliance? So for us, we talk about the AHJs, the authorities having jurisdiction, and for us, that a lot of times is OSHA, and then we have things like fire marshals, or like you’ve talked about insurance companies a lot. But what is more of the government side, I guess is the way to say it?
Well it would be…like you guys have NFPA in in in the US, we have ATEX, and so these are basically guidelines for manufacturing companies and machine suppliers where you have to comply to certain things when you’re working in a potentially combustible dust environment. So those are like the main, I mean ATEX is the main thing that you have to comply to. But then there’s also, since Europe has so many different countries, very often there’s like national legislation. But then if we have a customer that’s maybe a big group with plants in different countries in Europe and perhaps maybe even in the US or South America, then typically they have like a company policy. When they have a big safety department, they have standards, and then they apply those to all their sites.
So, who gets the final say? Is it just whoever’s got the highest level? I mean, is it the EU?
I guess at the end, it’s national, it’s the country. Because even though you are maybe in the EU…
It can be so different.
Yeah, so it’s really country-dependent.
It’s really complex. It’s hard enough here. I mean just like national and state jurisdiction.
And then sometimes, I mean we’ve had companies calling us and say, “Hey, our insurance people came in, and they made us shut your fans down.” And then we’re like, “But we’re making things cleaner and better.” But sometimes the insurance company doesn’t understand how the fans are intended to work because they think that we just blow down the dust which is absolutely not what we’re trying to do. It’s more of a preventive maintenance thing if the fans should run continuously and avoid new dust accumulation. So, we’ve had insurance companies or customers reach out to us like, “Hey, can you put it one more time in writing how the fans work exactly?” And then, I mean, a hundred percent of the time after that the insurance company was like, “Oh okay, this is just a misunderstanding. You can run them without a problem. And by the way, if this works, it’s pretty great.”
And they would also start to promote it for some other customers.
I’ve had the same conversation with fire marshals here in the US.
I think you have that letter like just as a template.
Dear Mr. Fire Marshal, here’s what we’re doing.
Yeah, but there are also other questions that come up. For example, do these interfere with my sprinkler system? Do these interfere with my smoke detectors? So yeah, we have also some templates that we send out to customers that they can, either if they have the question or they can forward that to their insurance company. But yeah, I think yeah, it’s the government in each country will have regulations. Then in the EU there’s ATEX rules. The EU also probably has some rules. Then there’s the insurance company. And then there’s also at the company level. But most of the time if it’s a big company, they will have experts to make sure that they comply to all these regulations.
Yeah, I mean, being the certification guy here, trying to get some things into Europe has been interesting to say the least. Because it’s like, I don’t know where to go. I can pull all the documents and the 2014 EU document that lists everything out, but then it’s like, I have a question, and it’s like, who do you send it to? And they’re like, well, you can send it to them. And then they’re like, well no, you have to just confirm it with them. And then all of a sudden it’s just kind of like, Looks good!
Do what you want. If you get caught in customs, you’re in trouble, but otherwise go for it. I mean, it’s tough. But we’re definitely navigating through it. And then as we look into other things like South America. It’s just always, everybody’s just different enough.
But I think what’s good is that the NFPA and the US regulations are just a little bit harsher than the others typically. So if we comply to what’s like the rules or certifications in the US, most probably we will comply with all the rest, luckily. It’s just that, for example, to get an ATEX certified fan, we have to go through a bunch of paperwork again. Because even if we do have Class II Division 2, Class II Division 1 fans in the US, we had to go through the same, or yeah different, paperwork to get an ATEX certified fan. Which we do now have, the ATEX 22 certified fan.
Yeah, which it’s good that now NFPA recognizes the fans. Does that ever help you? To be able to say, like, well NFPA says that you can do this.
Yes, we send it to people.
I have one slide in my presentation where I have highlighted in yellow, and it says you can use fans.
That’s awesome. I don’t think I’ve ever heard that. I’ve always thought it was the other way around where, if you were compliant in Europe, you’re probably compliant here. We’ve always had the assumption that everything over there is much more strict.
The only thing where I think it’s very different, I don’t know if it’s stricter, but it’s different, is the electrical parts. So, we’re very happy that we were able to develop a CE-approved panel, which we had to when shipping electrical components to the EU. So, that was I remember at the beginning of our collaboration a big point. But now everything’s very smooth. We never had any problems with equipment going through customs. Sometimes they ask for a lot of documentation, sometimes not. But we have everything ready to send, so.
Sometimes they cut open the boxes, they re-strap the stuff, they break equipment.
Oh yeah, shipping overseas is a little bit risky sometimes because the fans are being handled a lot, even though there’s a bunch of stickers, do not stack, and I’m not sure what they do with the fans sometimes to be honest.
It’s not an international problem. That’s a shipping problem. We have the same issues here stateside And we’re driving you know an hour down the road, and somehow the fan is broken when it’s delivered. Falls off a forklift, run through with a forklift. We’ve seen it all.
So, where do you guys see dust management going? What’s next on the dust horizon for the European market?
I think when we started, we installed most of the fans in the wood and paper industries, because simply they have most of the problems. But now we are more and more also in the laundries, and also the recycling facilities. They are also really starting to install more and more fans.
A lot of the recycling facilities have ATEX-rated zones, so we were really waiting on those ATEX fans to be available to approach them.
And for the sugar also.
Yes, in sugar, agricultural companies, we know that they need the fans, but a lot of those areas are ATEX-rated. So now we’re just getting started with the ATEX fans. And we can reach out back to these facilities. Because for some of those, we’ve started the conversation, and they were like, “Well, come back when you have the ATEX fan because there’s no way I can install it In that area.”
Do you feel like the agricultural industry there is looking for technology? It’s looking for better ways to do things? Because we feel like we developed this D1 fan here for the agricultural industry, and we said, “Here it is you’re gonna love it!” And they went, “Eh, what’s that? We’ve been using air wands and brooms forever, and it works. And we can’t find anybody to do it, but that’s how we do it.” And so they’ve been very, very slow to adopt the technology. So, are they, do you think, more open to new technology?
I would say so, especially if you do a first test installation which is successful, then they would start to implement it much more. But yeah, when I started in 2019, I went to visit a lot of sugar places, and they just said to me, “Please come back when you have an ATEX certified fan.” So now I will reach out to them again. Also some starch production facilities, I visited some of them, and they definitely need us. They also have a huge problem there.
Yeah, it’s wild to think about the laundry industry being a new market for them. Because that’s absolutely where we started 20 years ago here, was textiles.
I visited a lot of laundries in Europe. It’s a bit different than in the US. We have a lot of small laundries, versus I feel like here, There are larger but fewer…well, for a same size territory. Maybe there’s just one, but it’s big. In France and Germany and Spain, in the UK, where I’ve been visiting those laundries, really it’s a lot of laundries everywhere, but they’re really small, so we they need maybe four fans or six fans. Whereas I think there was a video, like a case study of a laundry in the US, and they have just a lot of fans. So that’s a bit different approach, because it takes a lot of time to visit each one, or do a study for each one of those.
But they definitely, definitely need the fans as well. They typically run them during the night. That’s what they do in Europe at least. And they have some smaller fans. They have a lot of obstructions, and we can’t blow on the clothes, so it takes a little bit more adjustment, rather than having a big hall with a very high ceiling. And also, typically these buildings are old. Like what you’ve seen recently close to where you live. There was a visit I think there was…
Yes, and so the building drawings are not so up-to-date, but we manage it with maybe some more compact fans.
Do your own drawings, yeah.
That is interesting, because I think we have a lot of large companies that own a lot of the little ones. Because I mean, that four to six fan operation sounds very much like…I mean, we just interviewed Tommy, and that was kind of the solution with them is, we did a ton of facilities, but it was the same kind of cookie-cutter four to six. And then they got one of our mobile units.
Yeah, a lot of these facilities are very similar though. So, now that we’ve done a lot of studies and visited a lot of them, I think also we just know them better, and we can address the problems in a better way. There’s also not a lot of small companies. It’s small laundries, but it’s all like the same groups. There’s a few groups that basically own all the laundries in Europe. So yeah, that’s exciting to get started in laundry.
Yeah, we also need to educate ourselves on the process and where the plans are needed and how we’re needed, where it’s important.
Yeah, yeah, but it’s been a big help that you guys had the experience here. So, I know that we ask maybe a lot of dumb questions.
No, no, no.
But yeah, this is really good that you guys have been in this business for a long time, and you’ve experienced with different industries. And I feel like, okay, we’ve been doing this since 2018 which seems like a long time, but it’s also a very short time frame, so we’re just getting started, I think. And a lot of different industries can benefit from this technology for sure, yeah.
Yeah, it’s just wild to me, like, as we’re talking about this, and just kind of the mindset of like, okay, they’re in Europe. It’s very different. But everything we’re talking about is exactly the same. The more that it’s different, the more that it’s exactly the same. And at the end of the day the customer still has the same problem, right? They are either having to stop their process, they’re stopping what they’re good at, their money-making operation, to do something that they don’t want to do, it isn’t safe, and they’re getting fine for it.
And now they’re swinging from the rafters. Repelling down like 007 trying to capture the dust.
Mark had a photo of them cutting a hole in the ceiling and doing like a super long chain crane hoist to drop the fan in, and you just think about like, somebody’s crawling up there with an air wand and just blowing it out.
Yeah, it’s crazy. Well, it’s Christmas.
Not yet, not yet.
And so, since you’re here In the US…It’s Christmas time. We’re celebrating. And so, since you guys are here in the US, particularly in the south I guess, we’ve got to introduce you to one of our best friends. Her name is Little Debbie. And she makes these things, these delicious little cakes. They are Christmas tree cakes. They are kind of a cultural icon.
Yeah, I’m not sure these would make it through customs into France.
They look nice. They look very cute.
They look amazing. They look like they were fresh baked this morning. But they were probably fresh baked back in August if I had to guess. So, enjoy!
Yes, enjoy. Thank you.
It’s very good.
Tastes fake.
Tastes like a fresh-baked French pastry?
No. *Laughs*
You can definitely get this in one of your local markets.
No, but it’s good.
It would probably survive for six years in the original packaging.
You think?
I mean, this would survive a nuclear war. They would dig this up and try to figure out what our culture was doing at the time.
If you eat too many of these you’ll go from Little Debbie to Big Deborah. You don’t want to do that.
All right, one more thing that’s kind of a custom here in this region this time of year is eggnog. I don’t know if you guys have eggnog.
I never had this. You tried it though, right?
I tried it, yes. Let’s try this one.
It’s very thick.
It has nothing to do with egg or nog, but it’s called eggnog. So, cheers!
In French we say santé or chin chin.
Or Prost in German.
Prost! What do you think, Mark?
I like it. It’s good.
Well, Merry Christmas.
Merry Christmas, thank you.
Thank you for being here. It’s so exciting to have you here. We love this partnership that we have with you guys and we’re excited to see where it keeps growing.
All right, that’s it. Thanks for watching another episode of the OnAire podcast. Like below, subscribe, all that stuff. I’m getting drunk on the non-alcoholic eggnog, apparently. It’s getting to me, Little Debbie and the eggnog. Yeah, thanks for watching. See you next time.
Bye bye!