Date: May 11, 2012 Author: Jeff Bell Source: bizjournals (
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Roy Brown only had to look across the parking lot at Guild Associates Inc.'s complex in Dublin to see the wisdom of a decision made about a dozen years ago.
The last components for a new biogas plant in Brazil were being loaded onto a truck for shipment, part of a $17 million order Guild had completed for the plant's developer, Gas Verde S.A., a Brazilian company, and California-based FirmGreen Inc., the supplier of equipment and technical know-how for the project.
Guild's equipment uses a technology dubbed the Molecular Gate Adsorption System that removes nitrogen from natural gas going into a pipeline in Brazil. Guild has been involved with the technology since it was developed by the former Engelhard Corp. in the late 1990s -- a time when Guild was primarily a government contractor.
"We decided it was time to diversify," said Brown, a Guild vice president who joined the company about a year after chemical engineer Ted DiNovo founded it in 1981. "Government contracts are ultimately cyclical. .... You fill a need and then they move on to something else."
Problem-solvers
Gas processing and other commercial work have come to represent about half of Guild's business mix, with government contracts accounting for the rest. The company has done about 40 gas processing projects, including in Brazil, Canada and the United Kingdom. In addition, its products for the military, including decontamination kits for vehicles, mobile laundries and battlefield mortuaries, are widely used by U.S. armed forces.
"We're not into manufacturing and development of weapons," said Wayne Ballantyne, a Guild vice president and a company founder. "It's strictly for soldier support."
Guild does everything from research and development to assembling products for customers in the chemical, material, mechanical, electronic and biotechnology sciences. It has 65 employees, including chemists and chemical, mechanical and electrical engineers.
"We've got incredibly capable people with interesting and innovative ideas to solve problems," said CEO Mark Hartman, who was hired nine months ago after executive stints at Rexel Holdings USA Corp. and Cardinal Health Inc.
DiNovo remains Guild's chairman and serves on its business advisory board. He and his family are majority owners of the privately held company, but workers have a 30 percent ownership stake as well.
"It's a very paternal company," Ballantyne said.
Fueled by gas projects
FirmGreen CEO Steve Wilburn said his company selected Guild Associates for the Brazilian biogas plant project because of its expertise in product fabrication and assembly. FirmGreen also uses Guild's Molecular Gate technology during part of the multi-phase process of converting the landfill gas to a biogas. In turn, that biogas is injected into a natural gas pipeline to an oil refinery operated by Brazilian energy giant Petrobras S.A. near Rio de Janeiro.
"We like their technology," Wilburn said of Guild, "and they have a reputation in the U.S. as being a great fabricator."
The final pieces of FirmGreen's biogas cleaning equipment are being assembled at the 350-acre Gramacho Landfill near Rio. The project represents an investment of about $100 million by Gas Verde, said Sergio Stacchini, company president. That includes constructing and equipping the biogas facility and installing wells and a gas collection system at the landfill.
The result, Stacchini said, will be the largest biogas plant in the world. It is a source of national pride in Brazil, he said, because some of the biogas is expected to be used to fuel shuttles when the country hosts soccer's World Cup in 2014 and the Summer Olympics in 2016.
Hartman said such gas processing projects, including ones in which liquid and compressed natural gas are used as vehicle fuels, will continue to be a key part of Guild Associates' focus. At the same time, Guild anticipates cuts in defense spending as the U.S. military reduces its presence in Afghanistan and Iraq.
"Military will still be a core business for us," Hartman said. "We have a solid return, but the limiting factor is the (defense) budgets and pursuit of systems the next several years."
