Andy Straisfeld - Through the Noise Transcript
MMallory KassoyNov 16, 2021 at 10:53 pm59min
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00:00Speaker 1
For example, I saw a picture one time of the flower market flowers and how they're shipped all around the world. Like, you know, when you go to your florist and you buy flowers, they're probably made, you know, somewhere 1000s of miles away. And so there's a, you know, there's a diagram that I saw that shows exactly how flowers and this is a very low cost products, but we don't make them here. So you know, you have to buy your flowers from somewhere else. So I think there has to be a kind of a reversion or swinging of the pendulum from this idea that we can just make things in bulk all around the world and ship it all around the world and just come back to a local economy. So to me, it's about local economies and creating, you know, that opportunity to keep it here. Through the noise with your host, Ernesto Glucksman.
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00:45Speaker 2
Alright, we're on guys. Thank you for joining me on the show. I am delighted that your publicist reached out I get a ton of emails, by the way from publicists, and they don't all always align with what we're trying to aim for. But when I came across what she had she had written about you guys, this is a collaborative project among a few different companies in Canada. And that you that this this project is really Canada's first circular economy based project targeting medical textiles. I had to have you guys on the show. So thank you both for joining us. I have Andy straight felt that I say that right. You got it. Ah, okay. It strays fall, you're the VP of Business Development, at revive, for lifecycle revive, right, right. And, and then I also have Lena Bowden and you are one of the partners that Carmina de Yong a company well lifecycle revive your you process the recycling the recycling material and some novel method associated with that. And Lina, you're part of the group that's going to take that material and remake that into medical grade PPE. Equipment, that's Well, let's start off with like, just a just a little overview of each company. We'll start with Andy, because kind of this that's sort of how I think it's sort of the linear product got the raw materials? And then we'll go to you, Lena, and can can you give us a sense of what you guys are doing?
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02:21Speaker 3
Alright, well, first of all, thank you very much for having an MI and lien on the show. I'm a big fan. I really enjoyed your, your show with Ali Blandina. And that's when I reached out to my publicist, because I said, I really got to talk to this dude. And, you know, share with him our thoughts and what we were doing and, and that was actually right at the cusp of when we were launching the company. So we I was a medical sales rep for a major international company here in Canada, and COVID hit and by the time the borders closed and medical products couldn't come in. I started acting like a like a matchmaker helping people, sir, you know, surf the the the world of trying to find PPE. So one of our partners who's not here today, NAD Halabi, got a government contract to make gowns. And then I went out and met Lena, and we'll talk to Lena and about that part, but as we were progressing, and as we were working through the shortages in this country, and as they were filling the the necessity, I went to visit the facility and I saw piles of piles of this waste, you know, just being thrown aside. And it started to hurt my soul. So I said, I picked up the phone and I called one of our colleagues who is Kurt Staley, who owns Optima plastics. And I said, Kurt, can you take scrap? And can we can we do something with it? So Sure we can. So we sat down all four of us, you know, this is the the Quartet the the the building of the band type of thing. And we agreed that what we wanted to do, and Lena went out got the funding. And by the end of the year, lifecycle, the entity was created, lifecycle revived, and then lifecycle health, which will be the the final end, which will be the textile side of the business. But yeah, and you know, in January, I left my job, I was unemployed probably for about three days until lead and the gang said, Hey, guys, you know, let's get Andy aboard and I came on board and here I am now and what we do is we go to hospitals, we take the clean sterile wrap and the bottles and whatever it is that is not dirty and bloodied. We go out into the public and we get people's backs and other PPS, we take it to our facility in Brantford, Ontario where we put into a gigantic machine that eats 3500 pounds of plastic and spits out pallets on either side. And those pallets can be sold or sent to manufacturers to make a wide variety of plastic goods including medical textiles, which will you know, it will be the the the beneficiary of the of that stuff and let's hand it unless there's anything else going on. So I had to delete No, that's it. It's a that's a good overview and
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04:49Speaker 2
I feel like it's stimulating a bunch of questions on that on on that how that came together. But Lina you're the one that's been in on the other end of this equation in the other on creating the materials in this this company, this group that you have, can you just describe to us what the what the group how that particular aspect of the business has been constituted? And what have you guys been doing since it sounds like you guys been in this business for a while?
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05:17Speaker 1
Before we look at the full circular chain, I think it's good to talk about Carmina de Yong. And the division that we created called CUI health where we'd be making PPE since the start of the pandemic. So those are the sort of the two bookends the recycling program that any spoke about. And then we've been making, we've been in the gown production business. And because we have a kind of sustainable values, we started out when the pandemic hit making reusable gowns, and we still do we still make reusable gowns, but the market seems to demand and hospitals and healthcare institutions seem to demand single use items, which you know, as Andy said, that kind of hurts our soul, because, you know, he basically gets worn once and it gets tossed into the garbage and it ends up in the landfill. And so throughout 2020, we, we did make isolation gowns, we made them for Health Canada through a subcontract actually through a partnership that Andy was involved with. And that's how we got to no end. So, you know, by the summer of 2020, as we were making more and more of these disposable isolation gowns, that's when you know, Andy was talking about this concept, as was his idea that we could actually create a way of not having the PPE and medical textile go to the landfill. So that's when we started to approach different funders. And we were successful in getting an engine grant, which is the next generation manufacturing. It's an organization that's funded by the federal government. And that was what really kick started our project to be able to then kind of fill in that middle piece, which is making the textile. So we were already making the isolation gowns. And we've been ramping up our staffing here in London, Ontario, making gowns. And we continue to do subcontracts for Health Canada, as well as provide isolation gowns and other PPE to other other health care providers and including, you know, emergency services and fire departments. So we're continually growing and improving our manufacturing capabilities to be able to make PPE. And that middle section is the textile production. So the project right now is we're in, in the market for a, what's called a spunbond textile line. So we that's the fabric that will be used to be able to make these gowns. So we're we've been, we've been right now in the process of identifying the right vendor and the right piece of equipment and building the full project to be able to bring one of these lines to Canada. And so that's not here yet. But we're very close to finalizing that as the middle activity whereby hopefully before the end of the year, we will have a textile line up and running. Which would mean if you follow now the full circle through we collect and reclaim all of that medical textile waste waste from the hospitals and scraps from manufacturers as well, because that's another source of textile waste, that'll go to Brantford, it gets re processed and made into polypropylene pellets, those polypropylene pellets then become the raw material to feed our Textile Machine. And then we'll make textile, that textile will then be used to make the isolation gowns and PPE that we hope to sell within Ontario and then have the full circle all happen again, with those same gowns and PPE that we make. Go back into the recycling system.
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08:43Speaker 2
So it's the it's the component for you guys at the moment is getting the raw pellets into something that you can then weave right is that that stage you're at right now shopping for machinery? Or who's how we're going to do that. Right? Yeah, but in but in terms of creating PPE creating this stuff, that's stuff that you guys are already you're doing that okay. And then Andy's machine is trying to get currently it's just the clean stuff the stuff that hasn't been used that might be thrown out, right, Andy?
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