SPONSORED PROFILE
H2Flow Celebrates 30 Years in Business By Michael Albanese, P.Eng.
I
t started as a dream. Literally, the name H2Flow came to me while I was sleeping and was woken up by it. I immediately wrote it on the notepad on my bedside table. January 2022 marks 30 years in business for H2Flow Equipment Inc., a journey that has taken the company from a one-man basement operation started in 1992 out of a rented house, to being one of the largest water and wastewater companies in Canada. I was 27 and had little money, did not own a house, no kids, no family financial support. Fortunately, my fiancée (and current wife) had a steady job and could pay the bills. I scraped together $7500 and went to the bank. They matched my funds with another $7500 (thank you Scotiabank!). This $15,000 was the seed capital that started the company. The dream was for H2Flow to become a manufacturer’s rep firm representing products for water and wastewater. The first few years were very difficult. I was not from Toronto and did not have connections here, nor schoolmates, having lived and studied in the U.S. prior to arriving in Canada. But I did have connections to manufacturers of this equipment. The technology was new, but municipal users and consultants were not so open to new ideas at that time. The need shifted towards industrial sales, where clients do not want products, but are looking for complete solutions instead. We were lucky, as at that time the pulp & paper sector was embarking on compliance programs. So we pursued a lot of that business, which provided much needed income. In just a few years we did projects at several paper mills. Albert Wakim joined the firm in 1994, proving to be a great asset, eventually becoming the first VP of the company. In 1996, the company employed four people and moved to its first real office, an industrial condo unit north of Toronto.
By the late 1990s the company enjoyed significant growth. We were here to stay, and the municipal market was ready to listen to us. I would say that a big breakthrough was the Walkerton tragedy, unfortunately. This event really increased awareness of the importance of drinking water systems. We represented Trojan, and we were ready to meet the immediate demands of the marketplace with their drinking water product line. The company’s growth continued, and by 2003 we employed 10 people. H2Flow was not only representing top manufacturers like Trojan, Fluidyne, Parkson, Leopold and Atara, but also offering engineered systems and complete packages to the industrial sector. We never forgot our roots and what kept us alive in the difficult early years. Those industrial customers included the food and beverage and mining sectors, but also the transportation, pulp & paper, metal & steel, chemical and petrochemical industries. This industrial aspect of the business led H2Flow to develop some of their own technologies, including DAF units, package plants based on extended aeration, SBR, MBBR and MBR, and containerized systems. In 2006, Lavishkar Bootun, our current VP of Engineering, joined the team and led the development of many of these products. Also in 2006, a sister company was created, H2Flow Tanks and Systems, to become the exclusive distributor and constructor of Permastore bolted steel tanks across Canada. Darrin Hopper “hopped” on board with us to run that company. In 2011, an Employee Share Ownership Program was created, where employees could purchase shares of the company and enjoy profit sharing and be able to directly benefit from the fruits of their labour. To date, the company
Today, H2Flow is a fully employee-owned company with a staff of over 50 people and offices in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.
46 | February 2022
Environmental Science & Engineering Magazine
