Poolrite to license pool equipment technology
Australian pool equipment manufacturer Poolrite is planning to license its technology and has appointed an equity investment firm to facilitate the process.
Poolrite CEO and owner Ross Palmer says he is seeking expressions of interest from investment partners or licensees to take their technology into international markets.
Palmer says that whatever investment scenario eventuates, he plans to ensure that the Brisbane factory will continue to operate.
“I’ve just turned 63 years of age. I’m great at building and structuring and growing a business,” Palmer says. “I did the same thing with Palmer Tube Mills and at a point in time I’d done what I had to do, and in 1994 I sold it to Australian National Industries for $205 million.
“There’s a lot of confusion as to what my Group is all about,” he says. “The entity that trades is Poolrite Australia, but the holding company is Poolrite Pty Ltd has been around forever and has subsidiaries Poolrite Europe, Poolrite New Zealand, Magnapool Corporation and Aquarius Technologies. We also have a real estate arm and dive charter arm, and a creative house which works for the Group and does outside work as well.”
Palmer says the intellectual property for the Group is held in the Formula Green Foundation.
“It’s an environmental foundation I set up in 2003. Out of that we’re funding medical research at the University of Queensland into health wellness benefits from magnesium. We fund a lot of research into what we’re doing with our technology.
“But we’re quite a small player in the field and we have a lot of interest to commercialise our technology on a worldwide basis. At my stage of life I’d rather be creating and inventing than working long hours.”
Palmer says he is looking at strategic options and in that light has engaged an investment firm which he founded in 1986 with two other people, Interfinancial Ltd.
“Paul Keehan from Interfinancial will be fielding enquiries,” he says. “We have any number of options, from licensing to acquisition of operations but we will be maintaining the intellectual property ourselves.
“Primarily, we’re an innovation technology company. My new chief operating officer Tony Schreiber came from One Steel Tube Mills and he has a Masters degree in intellectual property management.”
Palmer says there are more than 28 patterns attached to just the Magnapool and Ecosystem products alone, and that the Poolrite engineers are continuing to develop further technologies.
“We’ve just started up our Polystretch plant which is a revolutionary new technology for making filter tanks from stretch-reinforced polyester. There was seven years development in that, and that’s a technology I’ll be propagating and starting up another business called Polystretch.”
Palmer says they have exclusive rights from the developers and inventors of Polystretch for all pressure vessels over 50mm.
“Up until now, most used polyethylene terephthalate or PET is bailed up and sent to China and pulled into carpet yarn. The biggest PET bottle that had been made is 15 litres – well we’ve blown one up to 1000 litres. We can make a rainwater tank for a quarter of the cost of a high density polyethylene tank. We’ll be licensing that technology to other filter manufacturers, and it’s the only filter tank in the world that is hydrostatically tested at manufacture up to 700kPa. The tank itself will take over 2000kPa – more than twice that of FRP or fibre-reinforced polyethylene.”
When asked if the manufacturing will remain in Brisbane, Palmer says that he believes that would be a condition of any arrangement.
“I’ve owned Poolrite for 13 years now, and I love this industry. It’s not to say I’m going to leave the industry, because I won’t be selling my commercial Magnapool operation – we do commercial pools and swim schools and Aquarius controls. And that’s a huge market.”
All expressions of interest for partnerships can be directed to Paul Keehan of Interfinancial Ltd at interfinancial@poolrite.com.
