By John Wolcott
Special to The Herald
LYNNWOOD — Klean Earth Environmental Co. has made a major Asian market breakthrough, landing more than $100 million in technology-and-service agreements with China’s Sichuan Anxian Yihe Constructional &Chemical Group Co.
The contracts are for using KEECO’s patented cleansing techniques to treat process waste from a manufacturing process, as well as developing uses for its patented encapsulation technology in China.
Jim Roma, executive vice president of the Lynnwood company, said he believes this will be the first of several announcements of Chinese ventures for KEECO due to the support the company has gained in recent months from various Chinese governmental agencies and the Asian Development Bank.
The work in China is part of KEECO’s global expansion plans.
"This is the achievement of a significant milestone for KEECO’s silica micro-encapsulation treatment systems," said William Anderson, the company’s chief operating officer. "The (encapsulation) approach is the premier technology that can meet stringent new requirements that are now being enforced in every industrialized country."
KEECO’s process essentially locates heavy metals that are contaminating water and soil and covers them with an impervious coating, preventing the toxic material from migrating.
The KEECO agreement was signed in early May during the first U.S.-China Infrastructure Development meetings held during the Asian Development Bank annual meeting in Shanghai. The sessions brought together Chinese central and local government officials and U.S. firms and their Asian affiliates to conduct private discussions to promote the use of the bank’s technical and financial resources in the development of new public and private infrastructure in China’s poorer regions.
For its earlier overseas expansion efforts, KEECO recently won the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Export Achievement Award for 2001, linked to the firm’s global successes in marketing its encapsulation technology in foreign countries. The award was presented to KEECO’s CEO, Jimmie Andrews, in ceremonies in late May at the World Trade Center in Seattle.
KEECO’s treatment is now being used or evaluated in Canada, China, The Philippines, Japan, The United Kingdom, Chile and Peru.
"This is the achievement of a significant recognition for KEECO’s treatment systems," Anderson said.
In the United States, the company recently won a contract from the Maryland Port Authority for the second phase of its Baltimore Harbor dredged soils decontamination work. KEECO is part of a demonstration project designed to show that contaminated dredged materials can be treated sufficiently to produce cleansed soils that are marketable for other uses.
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