Latest / 360 with Katie Woolf / Life h2o Australia Founder Charley Feros explains his plans to manufacture water purification systems for the defence force

Transcript

Life h2o Australia Founder Charley Feros explains his plans to manufacture water purification systems for the defence force · 360 with Katie Woolf

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Now I always love hearing about great things happening in
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  Speaker 1: the Northern Territory and an innovative Darwin business is planning
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  Speaker 1: to manufacture and commercialize unique water purification systems. They're then
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  Speaker 1: going to be used by the Australian Defense personnel in
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  Speaker 1: military operations as well as disaster response and humanitarian aid efforts.
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  Speaker 2: Now Life h.
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  Speaker 1: Two and the Northern Territory Government are co investing two
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  Speaker 1: point five million dollars in the project, allowing the company
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  Speaker 1: to scale up, creating fifteen full time jobs over the
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  Speaker 1: next five years. And the founder joins me in the
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  Speaker 1: studio right now, Charlie Feros.
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  Speaker 2: Good morning to you.
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  Speaker 3: Morning.
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  Speaker 1: I've just had a bit of an issue with my
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  Speaker 1: microphone there, Charlie. I'm not too sure what's gone on.
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  Speaker 1: I'm going to have to try and sort that out
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  Speaker 1: very quickly. Just bear with me a moment. I don't
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  Speaker 1: think I'm going to be able to sort that one out,
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  Speaker 1: So Charlie, if I can, I might just get you
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  Speaker 1: to pop over there. Nothing like a bit of behind
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  Speaker 1: the scenes while we're on air. Let's try that again.
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  Speaker 3: Good morning, Charlie, Good morning Katie. How are you.
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  Speaker 1: I've been better my microphones to smallen off its off
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  Speaker 1: the desk.
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  Speaker 2: But don't worry about that now.
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  Speaker 1: Charlie tell us a little bit more about this project.
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  Speaker 4: Well, we're a family owned business, an innovative startup, and
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  Speaker 4: we've created be working with this trained Defense Force on
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  Speaker 4: a concept to fill capability gaps. So basically, at present,
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  Speaker 4: the ADF have large scale, containerized water treatment systems and
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  Speaker 4: nothing below that. So we've there's been a lot of
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  Speaker 4: instances where we've spoken to excerving members that have dealt
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  Speaker 4: with major events such as the tsunami in Java and
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  Speaker 4: places like that, and they've admitted that they've had all
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  Speaker 4: this great equipment, i haven't been able to get it
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  Speaker 4: in all the heavy equipment into where it was needed.
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  Speaker 4: So we've actually developed off grid man portable water purification
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  Speaker 4: equipment that can travel with you know, travel with men
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  Speaker 4: or on light vehicles, or be air dropped all that
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  Speaker 4: sort of stuff.
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  Speaker 1: And look, it sounds like pretty phenomenal stuff because, as
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  Speaker 1: you've said there, you know, in some of these situations,
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  Speaker 1: whether you're talking about defense or whether you're talking about
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  Speaker 1: humanitarian aid situation, you would need to make this process
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  Speaker 1: pretty mobile and be able to get it there. Really
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  Speaker 1: rather quickly, you know, even if you're talking about a
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  Speaker 1: tsunami that needs to happen pretty fast, doesn't it.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right.
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  Speaker 4: And the current response in a lot of areas is
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  Speaker 4: to use bottle water, so goodles a bottle of water,
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  Speaker 4: which obviously creates a plastic waste issue and all that
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  Speaker 4: sort of stuff. So if you've got light, you know,
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  Speaker 4: self sustaining equipment for floods, for cyclones or a lot
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  Speaker 4: of events, then you've got a lot of water, but
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  Speaker 4: you can't drink it. Yeah, we can actually treat the
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  Speaker 4: water on site and be able to administer that water
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  Speaker 4: without having the logistic movements and the plastic waste and
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  Speaker 4: all that.
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  Speaker 1: Now, Madam'm not expecting you to share your trade secrets,
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  Speaker 1: but how exactly does this system, like, how does it
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  Speaker 1: sort of work?
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  Speaker 4: Basically, there's a Yeah, I won't get into the technicalities,
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  Speaker 4: you'll probably fall asleep on me. Yeah, basically, we've taken
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  Speaker 4: a number of different processes to be able to treat virtually.
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  Speaker 3: Any type of water. So you know, borewater the in the.
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  Speaker 4: Territory, or surface water or seawater can be all dealt
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  Speaker 4: within the one system. So, for example, the first Combat
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  Speaker 4: Engineer Regiment have had systems in service for the last
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  Speaker 4: two years and they've deployed overseas to team or and
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  Speaker 4: dealt with salt water or they've had exercises with the
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  Speaker 4: US Marines out in Bradshaw, YEP where they're dealing with
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  Speaker 4: you know.
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  Speaker 3: Pretty bad boarwater.
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  Speaker 4: I'm told I've actually been thanked by a lot of
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  Speaker 4: the serving members out there saying that the water quality
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  Speaker 4: was much better when they were using my system.
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  Speaker 1: And so the systems obviously already in place in a
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  Speaker 1: number of locations, is that.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, So we've worked directly with the first Combat Engineer
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  Speaker 4: Regiment at Robinson. The idea was to take the pain
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  Speaker 4: early and do a user based design, where we're designing
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  Speaker 4: system with the boots on the ground they have to
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  Speaker 4: use it. So that does a lot of things as well,
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  Speaker 4: where it creates barriers to entry as well, because we're
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  Speaker 4: fit for purpose systems for the people who need to
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  Speaker 4: administer the technology and use the capability.
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  Speaker 1: So really trying to make it as practical as possible
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  Speaker 1: by the sounds of things.
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  Speaker 4: That's right, Yeah, and we can translate into many different
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  Speaker 4: sectors as well. And you know, obviously you know people
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  Speaker 4: have thrown scenarios at me for remote communities. Obviously, ecotourism
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  Speaker 4: in remote locations as well. What tends to make the
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  Speaker 4: grain nomads move on is.
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  Speaker 2: The water quality.
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  Speaker 4: If you want them to stay lone, you improve the water. Yeah,
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  Speaker 4: so we've got there's a long way to go. That way,
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  Speaker 4: we can even move into We've had talks with government
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  Speaker 4: and others about water. Pure water or deionized water is
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  Speaker 4: a crucial element for hydrogen production as well, so we're
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  Speaker 4: able to achieve that also.
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  Speaker 2: Now, how did you come up with this concept?
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  Speaker 1: How did you decide that you were you know that
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  Speaker 1: you were going to go down this path. You're having
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  Speaker 1: a couple of beers and thought, I'm going to come
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  Speaker 1: up with a purification process for water that's mobile.
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  Speaker 3: Years and years ago.
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  Speaker 4: I used to when I was a fitter man. I
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  Speaker 4: used to do a lot of checking in South America
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  Speaker 4: and things like that. And if you're on a three
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  Speaker 4: or a week long track, you can't carry enough water
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  Speaker 4: to sustain yourself. So you need to be able to
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  Speaker 4: use methods to treat water. So I guess that's where
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  Speaker 4: the fascination started. And then I used to spend my
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  Speaker 4: previous career was in property development where we dealt with
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  Speaker 4: water quality, leaving development sites and things like that.
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  Speaker 3: So I worked.
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  Speaker 4: Closely with environmental engineers and the like, mentioning the drinks.
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  Speaker 4: The Probably the move to Darwin was probably over a
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  Speaker 4: few too many red wines with my wife, my lovely
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  Speaker 4: wife who supports all my hair brain schemes. Yeah, we
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  Speaker 4: sort of recognized my wife's from South America, South Africa.
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  Speaker 3: Sorry, I'm from regional Australia.
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  Speaker 4: And you know, you can build a kilometer high skyscraper
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  Speaker 4: in Jubai, you can take a passenger flight into space. Yeah,
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  Speaker 4: but not every man, woman and child on the planet
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  Speaker 4: can have clean access to clean drinking water. So we
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  Speaker 4: feel that that is a bit of a failure.
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  Speaker 3: On mankind's past.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 4: And for my little three year old turns around one
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  Speaker 4: day and says, we love what mum and dad did
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  Speaker 4: with life.
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  Speaker 3: H two A. That would be that would be absolutely fantastic.
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  Speaker 1: Good on you guys. It sounds like an incredible concept.
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  Speaker 1: And then you know, being able to actually put this
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  Speaker 1: into practice, particularly in some of those humanitarian AIDS situations,
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  Speaker 1: it sounds like it's a fantastic thing to do. Tell me,
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  Speaker 1: like at the moment, again understanding that you're running a
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  Speaker 1: business and that there is some stuff you can't go into.
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  Speaker 1: But whereabouts are you currently sort of doing this? Do
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  Speaker 1: you have a number of you know, of the purification
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  Speaker 1: systems already in place around the territory.
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  Speaker 3: Mainly in defense at the moment.
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  Speaker 4: And we've just the announcement from the Chief Minister on
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  Speaker 4: Monday was enabled us to move in last month to
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  Speaker 4: a larger.
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  Speaker 3: Facility at Winnelly the golf center.
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  Speaker 4: And yeah, we're actually creating a production facility there and
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  Speaker 4: we've already started creating a handful of jobs and where
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  Speaker 4: you hope to move that forward and gain a lot
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  Speaker 4: more momentum.
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  Speaker 2: Well, all the very best.
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  Speaker 1: Like I say, I think it sounds like a wonderful thing,
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  Speaker 1: you know, to be able to do that, And as
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  Speaker 1: you pointed out that you know it is so it's
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  Speaker 1: so bizarre, isn't it that you can have a building
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  Speaker 1: that's a kilometer high, but we can't have drinking water
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  Speaker 1: for everybody.
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  Speaker 2: So it does sound like a fantastic thing to be doing.
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  Speaker 1: I really appreciate you coming into the studio this morning
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  Speaker 1: and having a chat to us about it.
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  Speaker 3: Thanks very much.
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  Speaker 2: Thank you, thanks so much,