FDBusiness.com

Clonmel, Tipperary-founded company Trustwater has won a major sustainability award at the International Dairy Federation Innovation Awards at the Dairy World Summit in Parma, Italy, for its pivotal chemical technologies around water and energy that help companies save money.

One of Trustwater’s largest customers is Coca-Cola, while the company is making successful export inroads into countries such as Iran and Mexico.

The hygiene-technology company, which pioneers cleaning and disinfection technology for the global dairy processing industry, was yesterday awarded for ‘Best Environmental Sustainability Initiative’ at the dairy summit in Parma, itself famous for its ham and dairy products, such as Parmalat.

Trustwater has developed an alternative cleaning and disinfection technology that replaces traditional chemicals in a variety of cleaning and disinfection applications.

Trustwater was awarded the IDF accolade after showing it could eliminate the costs associated with traditional chemicals, it could reduce cleaning water by up to 50pc and hot water energy savings of up to 60pc, and reduce cleaning cycle times by up to 75pc – increasing leading to a significant increase in factory productivity.

Rather than buying in traditional chemicals, Trustwater’s patented generators produce detergents and sanitisers on-site, using only water and salt, deploying sophisticated scientific processes.

The applications for these solutions in food manufacturing include low-temperature clean-in-place, process system cleaning and aseptic disinfection.

The company also has a successful water disinfection division that is now installed in hundreds of sites worldwide for applications including Legionella control, dental waterline disinfection and microbial biofilm control.

Trustwater – one of the few Irish companies to successfully do business in Iran

^{Trustwater CEO Edmond O’Reilly}
Trustwater was founded in 2004 by its CEO and majority shareholder, Edmond O’Reilly. The company has offices in Minneapolis US, Norway, Germany and Singapore.

So far in 2011, Trustwater has grown its markets to include China, Philippines, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Brazil and Mexico and its single largest customer is believed to be Coca-Cola. The company recently won a large contract to supply its technology to an Iranian food processor, making it one of the few Irish companies successfully doing business in Iran.

Rather than buying in chemicals, customers install a Trustwater generator onsite. Each generator produces two solutions simultaneously: Aversol, a powerful detergent, and Ecasol, an unparallelled disinfectant solution. These solutions have proven to be far more effective than traditional detergents and disinfectants, yet, importantly, are harmless to the environment, are non-toxic and offer significant efficacy, health and safety over conventional disinfection methods, said O’Reilly yesterday.

Following the win, O’Reilly said: “We are delighted with this recognition from the biggest innovation event in the dairy industry. Our success is due to a great team, who are highly talented, prepared to work hard for the business both at home and abroad.”

In 2010, Trustwater was the winner of the ‘Irish Manufacturing Exporter of the Year 2010’ at the IEA Export Industry Awards. It was also awarded the ‘Best New Bottling, Manufacturing or Production Technology Innovation’ at the 2010 InterBev Awards in Florida.

The 2011 IDF Dairy Innovation Awards were presented at the IDF World Dairy Summit on 18 October. This year’s awards attracted more than 300 entries from 25 countries in categories ranging from products, to packaging, marketing and environmental sustainability.

Carmel Doyle