BWT Company Boosts Equity

US ballast water treatment corporation Ecochior gets financial support for growth

Ballast water treatment plant manfufacturers Ecochlor, Inc. announced today that it recently completed a $4.1 million equity financing to support its growth into the burgeoning ballast water treatment market. Investors participating in the financing included Sojitz Marine & Engineering Corporation, the shipping subsidiary of the Japanese trading company, Sojitz Corporation, and a number of individual investors. Sojitz invested $1.8 million. Since its formation in 2001, Ecochlor has raised over $12 million in equity.

The company’s Ballast Water Treatment Systems use chlorine dioxide technology, which has been used in water treatment and industrial applications for decades, to disinfect water used as ballast on ships. Ecochlor said it is the exclusive licensee of Eka Chemicals’ Purate chlorine dioxide technology.

As part of the financing, Sojitz became the exclusive distributor for Ecochlor’s products in Japan and Taiwan and a non-exclusive distributor in China and South Korea.

Large, ocean-going vessels have long used seawater in their ballast tanks to stabilize cargoes. As ships fill their ballast tanks with water in one region of the world and discharge it in another, invasive plants and animals can be released into new ecosystems with disastrous effect. To address this issue, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) adopted certain standards in 2004 that would require ships throughout the world to eliminate invasive species in their ballast water. The long process of ratification of these standards now appears to be reaching an end. When this occurs, approximately 60,000 vessels will be required to install ballast water treatment systems. Some estimates place the size of the market at over $30 billion over the next 10 years