MONTREAL,
April 14, 2009
(Press Release) -
Management of GLV Inc. is pleased to announce the acquisition of certain assets of Elcotech Technologies Inc. ("Elcotech"), a young company based in Boucherville (Québec, Canada) with some 10 employees. Concluded at a purchase price of $500,000, the acquisition primarily covers the intellectual property rights and patents related to the equipment line using the state-of-the-art municipal and industrial wastewater sludge treatment technology developed by Elcotech.
Municipal and industrial wastewater sludge is 75% to 90% water. However, conventional mechanical dewatering technologies can only extract the free water (i.e., the water not adsorbed by biosolids), with the result that the water content of the residual material remains high, at 65% to 85%. Certain thermal processes yield better dewatering rates through water evaporation, but these processes are costly in terms of capital and energy. Elcotech's technology has the advantage of using electro-osmosis to separate water molecules from biosolids, thereby reducing substantially the residual material volume with minimal energy consumption. In addition, the technology can eliminate pathogens and odours, resulting in a higher-quality biomass that could be used for agricultural land spreading or as biofuel for the production of green energy. To date, a few industrial companies have acquired Elcotech's electro-dewatering equipment, the performance of which has impressed the wastewater sludge treatment experts working for GLV's Water Treatment Group (Eimco Water Technologies).
"We are very pleased with this acquisition, which is fully consistent with our commitment to provide our customers with increasingly high-performance, economical and ecological solutions. With its exceptional features, Elcotech's technology is ideally suited to sectors with particularly challenging sludge processing needs, including the food and beverage industry, the pulp and paper industry, the textile industry and the municipal sector. In addition, this easy-to-use, easy-to-maintain and energy-efficient equipment fits perfectly into our existing technological portfolio and can be marketed in substantially all our business segments. This acquisition thereby enhances our ability to provide our customers with comprehensive solutions, while also enabling them to lower their landfill costs or, better yet, to produce green biomass-based energy. We intend to leverage our international engineering and sales network in order to maximize the benefits of this strategic acquisition for our Water Treatment Group," indicated Richard Verreault, President and Chief Operating Officer of GLV.
A Third Strategic Transaction in Less Than Three Months for the Water Treatment Group
The acquisition of Elcotech takes place following two other business agreements recently concluded by GLV in order to expand the Water Treatment Group's presence in targeted markets and to integrate new eco-friendly and high performance technologies into its product offering. In January 2009, GLV announced the creation of Global Water & Energy, LLC ("GW&E"), an Austin, Texas, based joint venture 70%-owned by GLV. GW&E holds an exclusive and perpetual license to market state-of-the-art anaerobic digestion technologies for the treatment of industrial wastewater and for the conversion of the biogas generated by the process to produce green energy. In the short term, GW&E will primarily target the North American food and beverage processing industry and certain other key sectors. Last January, GLV also announced it has been granted an exclusive licence to sell and distribute the advanced digester sludge mixing technology developed by the company Enersave Fluid Mixers Inc., for the U.S. and Canadian municipal sludge treatment market. This economical, ecological and user-friendly technology notably requires up to 80% less power than conventional processes.
