Supplier Interview: Ecolab

Mike Hickey, executive vice president and president of Global Institution for Ecolab discusses the company’s products.

Can you tell me about Ecolab’s new innovations?

We launched a revolutionary floor cleaning programme, highlighted by our product ‘Sanitizing Wash and walk’. It reduces labour and reduces the use of water and energy, and sanitises at the same time.

How can it save water & energy?

You don’t have to rinse the product. Typically in any floor cleaning process, after you apply the product, you have to rinse with fresh water but in this case the product works better when it’s not rinsed. You eliminate a step, which allows you to reduce water consumption considerably. And you don’t have to heat the water, which saves energy. Many of our customers are trying to be more efficient in their operations, so any time we can help them with a programme or process to reduce labour, it’s a big win for them. We serve virtually any segment that has a need for cleaning and sanitising.

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In terms of foodservice safety in the UAE, how high do you think standards are?

I have been very impressed with the standards in the UAE. The partnership between the business community and the government works very well in terms of driving the need for good food safety practices and ensuring guests have a good experience. Everybody understands the importance of good food safety practices because nobody wants to have that one incident where somebody comes to their restaurant or hotel and gets sick; that would hurt the customer and the brand. At the end of the day, you want people to enjoy their meal and not worry about getting sick. Today, with social media as it is, word of a food safety incident gets out so much quicker and stays around so much longer that the need for our types of programme and the things that we offer customers are more important than ever.

Do you have any other new products coming up?

We will launch some new product technology that will enable us to help customers reduce the need for storage and improve their ability to ship products because it’s a solid concentrated product, as opposed to them shipping liquids. We launch products globally; a lot of brands want to go to multiple regions and we want to make sure we can give them the consistent products, programmes and systems that they would want, no matter where it is in the world. We work very hard to understand all the local laws and regulatory requirements so that when we are ready to launch, we are compliant before we start.

Where are your R&D centres?

We have five R&D facilities and technical service centres stationed around the world. You have to make sure that you have people on the ground to understand what’s specific to an area. For example, the water in the UAE is a very important part of what we do; we want to make sure that we understand the water conditions in any local market so that our products work when they get there.

How does the product have to adapt to the water?

It depends on what’s in it. The quality of the water — any time you are injecting water into a product, it can change how that product performs, so we want to make sure that we understand what the water conditions are locally so that the product works to the customers’ expectations.

Any trends in customer need?

Cost is a consistent consideration but what has evolved is an ever-changing issue around labour, in terms of cost and availability. The sustainability aspect of products and systems has emerged in a way that people are expecting it, as opposed to being a special request, historically. Customers expect you to be sustainable in how you make your product and the product that you give them.

How do you ensure you consider the environment in this respect?

Our products and systems have historically been built around sustainability although we may have not marketed them this way. It’s interesting how we used to approach product innovation more around the cost of an operation — cost of labour, water, energy — and still do, but in doing that, we have always been working on sustainable programmes as a result. Most of the world sells chemicals in liquid form but we realised going to solids reduces the need for water and reduces packaging needs — we can reduce the packaging of a one litre bottle by 99% with the wrapper that we use on our solid technology products.

Any updates you can share about the company’s future?

We have invested heavily in the MENA region in the past few years as we see this as a big emerging market, and we look for trends that support our customers.