Ore. company makes water filters for tsunami victims

[Amelia]

Ore. company makes water filters for tsunami victims

Wednesday, January 5, 2005

Associated Press

ALBANY, Ore. -- A water filter invented by an Albany company will soon help provide clean water to tsunami victims in southeast Asia.

Known as the X-pack, the water filtration device by Hydration Technologies Inc. consists of a plastic bag with a patented membrane. The membrane filters out the foul water and creates a drink loaded with electrolytes, a little sugar and a little salt.

On Thursday, Bob Salter, the Albany company's founder, received a phone call from the Pentagon asking him to produce as many of the bags as he could to help hydrate victims of the massive tsunami in the Indian Ocean.

"We knew the day was coming, but we didn't anticipate that it would happen the way it did. We knew that the military was going to place a multimillion-dollar order at some point, we just didn't know when," Salter said.

Over the holiday weekend, the factory floor full of workers, marking the first time the operations has gone into full-scale production.

Workers on the floor were engaged in welding together the bags, pressure-testing them, and making up bottles of syrup that fuels the process of converting foul water into a potable beverage.

"We brought in as many people as we can handle, and right now we're hitting our production target of a thousand X-Packs a day," Salter said. "We've gone through all the exercises of production, but we've never really run it full-bore until the end of last week."

For the past nine years, the company, formerly known as Osmotek, made membranes for a variety of applications, ranging from food dehydration to containing contaminants from landfills.

Over time, the membranes improved to the point where they could purify foul water, even urine. The product has been tested by various branches of the military in battlefield conditions.

Later this year, the company plans to release a product that can filter seawater.

The company expects to receive a contract in excess of $4 million from the Army in the near future.

Now, the immediate problem is cash flow to cover the costs of ordering new supplies. The government funds have not yet arrived, and the company is burning through the materials it has in its facility.

Salter said he's received assurances from the Army that the money is on its way.

"We're going through all the raw materials we have to produce as much as we can as fast as we can. But I'm going to need to buy $500,000 worth of new materials if I wanted to do what I ought to do," Salter said