LONG BEACH, CA—After a year of exceptional global stress and turmoil dominated by COVID-19, Ship & Shore Environmental Inc (S&SE), a pioneer in pollution abatement solutions, announced prior-year results that reflect the company’s ability to pivot quickly and tailor its solutions to people and regions in need.
While calendar year 2020 sadly saw many businesses curtail or close operations, S&SE annual revenue remained consistent with 2019 levels. The company actually managed to expand its client roster, according to S&SE President and CEO Anoosheh Oskouian, who noted that environmental concerns don’t vanish during a pandemic. In some cases, the need for pollution abatement and sanitization during an outbreak even increases.
Rapid Adaptation
By March 2020, the world understood the gravity and lethality of the COVID threat. Schools and businesses shut down around the world, but essential services remained critical to ensure that industry could continue and people’s needs would be met. As a services supplier to many industries, S&SE was deemed “essential” in every region of operation. However, adapting to the new normal and keeping workers healthy demanded rapid changes.
In April, S&SE launched its Controls Upgrade Program, which featured the following elements for customers:
- Controls upgrading. S&SE offered overall controls upgrading for existing customers so that all installed oxidizers could have the latest state-of-the-art controls and programming. This allowed customers to be better prepared for emergency situations and less likely to require system maintenance and tuning during the pandemic
- Remote accessibility & support. S&SE provided clients with complimentary engineering assistance as well as a discounted rate on the supply and installation of an integrated virtual private network (VPN) connection on any existing Ship & Shore oxidizer system. A VPN creates a secure, encrypted connection between two computing devices, such as an SSE oxidizer and a remote technician’s PC, and allows for system management while maintaining physical distancing from the work site. VPN functionality would be provided for free on any new oxidizer purchase
- Higher accessibility. S&SE expanded remote options for both customer support and business conferences. The expansion helped alleviate the need for in-person meetings while also ensuring that customers working under increased pressure could access all needed S&SE help
International Expansion
In late 2019, S&SE opened manufacturing facilities in Shanghai (under the Ship & Shore China division) and commenced operations in Bangkok, Thailand. In both cases, the intent was to both solicit accounts for abatement products and services while also acting in a consulting role for trade and government organizations. By bringing S&SE’s ample technical expertise and longstanding experience with assisting groups such as the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to the table, S&SE was in a unique position to spread knowledge and help groups craft sustainable policies for cleaning living.
By late 2020, S&SE was ready to continue its global growth and launched its first operations in India. With at least 20 of the world’s 30 most polluted cities, India’s need for pollution abatement is immense and only exacerbated by the COVID pandemic. One US study found that long-term air pollution exposure was “associated with a 15 percent increase in the COVID-19 death rate,” although clearly many regions beyond India grapple with similar issues.
As in China, S&SE works with India on both a national scale and with local partners to help deploy services and solutions in local markets in accordance with local regulations and needs. S&SE opened its Indian operations with a complete team for sales, marketing, business development, and expert engineering specifically for the Indian market.
20 Years of Clean Air Solutions
As the year progressed, further information came to light regarding the coronavirus and how to fight it. Leveraging their years of experience engineering, designing and understanding clean air handling, S&SE subsidiary Ship & Shore Technologies (SST) launched the Korozon product line, a decontamination and disinfection technology based on antimicrobial activated oxygen. Korozon for ventilation systems integrates with a building’s existing HVAC system and helps purify a building’s air and surfaces that may be harboring bacteria, viruses and other organic health hazards. Activated oxygen offers several advantages over alternative disinfection processes, such as ultraviolet- and vapor-based approaches, and excels on safety, efficacy and cost-effectiveness metrics.
S&SE’s Korozon Systems involve innovative use of activated oxygen generators backed by S&SE’s years of engineering calculations and safety protocol experience to allow for a safe and effective method for disinfection and air treatment. The technology can be custom engineered for a small room or scaled up for deep disinfection use by a large industrial facility.
During the fall of 2020, the company also celebrated its 20th anniversary providing pollution abatement technologies and services to a world in ever greater need of clean water, healthy air and safe workspaces.
Going into 2021, S&SE looks to build on 2020’s successes. Other regions need and would benefit from the company’s many pollution abatement technologies. Currently, the COVID pandemic continues to post record-setting weekly case and mortality numbers. The problems of 2020 remain, but the clean air solutions that S&SE bring to confront them only continue to improve.