Fertilizer International 518 Jan-Feb 2024
31 January 2024
New Kimre leadership!
COMPANY PROFILE
New Kimre leadership!
For 50 years, Kimre engineers and application specialists have been solving process and gas stream emission problems in chemical and fertilizer plants around the globe. In an exclusive interview, Kimre’s new president Mary Gaston sets out her plans for the company, building on its invaluable understanding of gas and vapour stream separation and mass heat transfer.
Introduction
The main office and manufacturing site of Kimre™ Clean Air Technology is located in Homestead, Florida. Global operations are also supported by an additional US manufacturing site in Pennsylvania, a Chinese manufacturing partnership, and a worldwide network of distributors and representatives.
Kimre’s range of services include top-of-the line filtration to customised turnkey air pollution control systems. The company notably designs, engineers and manufactures its own monofilament filters – with an in-house fibre bed filter division that custom designs and fabricates each filter to meet the specific performance requirements of each customer. Kimre’s highly qualified engineers also provide expertise in various applications, including ammonium nitrate, chrome, nitric acid, phosphates, sulphuricacid, urea granulation and oil mist.
New leadership
Mary Gaston became the new president of Kimre in May 2023. She was previously a partner at leading US law firm Perkins Coie. Mary’s legal background, which included representing Fortune 100 companies in high-stakes claims, makes her well qualified for the challenges of her new role.
In particular, she spent decades working hand-in-hand with experts in dozens of technical and scientific disciplines, including materials science and mechanical engineering. Mary is now combining these technical skills with her proven business and finance acumen to lead Kimre, a company that has spent the last fifty years cleaning the air on every continent (see timeline).
In an exclusive interview with Fertilizer International, Ms Gaston sets out her plans to build on and develop Kimre’s mission: “to design and innovate technologies, which clean and protect our environment to create a better world for future generations.”
Your background is very unusual, Mary, in that your skills set combines business leadership and financial acumen with an in-depth understanding of science, engineering and technology. How important is this mix of skills for a manufacturing company like Kimre and its business ethos – given that it was founded and previously led by George C Pedersen, an MIT graduate?
Make no mistake Simon, while I believe those skills are critical, I believe the most important thing I bring to Kimre is that I share the founder’s deep commitment to the company’s mission. With that in mind, there are two key points to emphasise.
First, Kimre manufactures a technically sophisticated product, which in many markets has no equal in terms of performance due to its unique physical structure. Second, we have fifty-years of experience designing custom solutions – ranging from the most straightforward to the most complex – in a wide range of industries. Because of that, when designing a solution, only rarely do our engineers discover that Kimre hasn’t already successfully addressed this problem previously.
I therefore firmly believe that Kimre will, by combining its inimitable product with its depth of engineering and design expertise, significantly increase its global impact and do more to deliver its long-standing mission – that is to clean and protect our environment to create a better world for future generations.
Yes, as President, it is vitally important to have a thorough understanding of the technical and financial side of the business. Those skills will ensure that the company continues to be successful in an increasingly nuanced global marketplace.
“Improvements to Kimre’s technology have helped scrubber manufacturers across the world achieve the lowest emissions for some of the most hazardous air pollutants
But to do more – to truly fulfil Kimre’s mission and improve our reach – I believe an unwavering commitment to increasing our positive impact on the global environment will drive the business forward. Achieving that will require laser focus on three business areas: strategic internal growth, unrivalled technological innovation, and careful expansion of our global network.
If the past is a reliable indicator, the strength of my convictions about Kimre’s potential, as a business and for environmental improvement, is what will drive me to excel in this role.
Kimre celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2023. But the company has consciously chosen to look forward, not back, and has marked this landmark birthday by investing in and expanding its engineering and technical sales teams. What organisational changes have been made, what was the thinking behind these, and how will customers benefit?
To its credit, the company has never sat on its laurels. Kimre has, in fact, always prided itself on providing rewarding careers to employees who have dedicated their working life to the business. Some of our current team members have been here more than 30 years, while others who started with the company have retired from it.
Frank Power recently became our chief technology officer (CTO), joining Kimre’s executive leadership team and our board of directors. That’s definitely been a significant milestone in 2023. Frank is a chemical engineer with 27 years of experience in air pollution control and process improvement at Kimre. He’s also a recognised authority on mist, aerosol and particulate elimination and scrubbing solutions, with expertise across many industries.
One of Frank’s prime responsibilities in his new role is mentoring the next generation of Kimre engineers, equipping them with the necessary expertise and experience so they can support our customers with the same rigour and dedication that Frank and our founder have provided for decades. A daunting task, for sure, but one that I know Frank will undertake with his usual skill and determination.
To fulfil its growth ambitions, Kimre needs to go beyond investing in and expanding our engineering group – we also need to ensure the company has the necessary technical infrastructure in place to support and sustain that growth. This makes the addition of Mark Zbikowski to the executive and engineering team another big win this year. Formerly a director who sat on our board, Mark has now joined Kimre as VP and chief information officer.
His name is actually a very familiar one and renowned by tech industry insiders, as, remarkably, only Bill Gates and Steve Balmer reached 25 years at Microsoft prior to Mark! That’s a testament to the calibre of expertise he brings to Kimre. Mark, by harnessing his years of managing global product launches and software engineering teams, will ensure that we deploy cutting-edge technologies and systems to provide the most efficient and economical solutions to our world-wide customers.
Do you have any immediate priorities for the business – and do these have to be balanced with listening and learning?
Simon, you will not be surprised to hear that my priorities are both numerous and diverse. Some I’ve implemented immediately, others undoubtedly will take more time. The quick wins have included moving to a more customer-centric approach, encouraging an inclusive and collaborative company culture, and improving our social commitment to our community.
We have put in place processes, for example, that ensure we fully engage with and listen to our customers every step of the way. Whether it’s customer service, troubleshooting, or timeliness, we now actively seek out and listen to customer feedback and then act on this by making changes. Likewise, to achieve Kimre’s growth goals, we have taken new steps to empower and cross-train our workforce, and to instil and maintain a culture of innovation and pride.
Last, social commitment is important to me, for many reasons, and I believe it should also be important to Kimre and its employees. The South Florida community has supported Kimre for many years and, in my view, it is the responsibility of those who have benefited from their community to give back to it – particularly in this day and age. I’m therefore proud to say that, while we’re still in the beginning stages, Kimre’s employees have embraced this new commitment to our local community. Everyone at the company was also honoured to have been named the 2023 Manufacturer of the Year recently by the South Florida Manufacturers Association.
To successfully achieve other priorities – I’m including the expansion of Kimre’s geographical and product reach here – I will need to take the necessary time to educate both myself and my team on many matters, some quite complex and some difficult to discern. That requires us all – me and the business – to embrace evolving customer priorities, changing emission standards, and the synergies to be gained with potential partners.
Fortunately, I have an excellent and dedicated group of colleagues and advisors assisting me, both inside and out. I’m therefore confident that time spent on learning upfront will result in my making better decisions in the not-too-distant future!
Although US-headquartered with manufacturing facilities in Homestead, Florida, Kimre operates as truly global business. As it has expanded, how has the company managed to keep serving its customers, both domestically and internationally?
Well, the fact that Kimre, a company in Homestead, Florida, has a global reach is always a surprise to our local community! But, to answer the question, our global success is built on multiple pillars.
First, we have dedicated employees and a company culture where everyone is committed to exceeding customer expectations. Second, we are focused on being a long-term, loyal partner to our amazing worldwide customers – many of whom have been with us since the company was founded and many of whom enjoy telling the stories of when Kimre went ‘above and beyond’.
Third, we also have a wide network throughout the United States, starting with a facility in Pennsylvania and reps across the nation, together with an extensive international network. That includes not just Kimre China but also reps and distributors in Europe, Morocco, Brazil, Korea, and India – to name but a few!
Last but not least, we truly value the importance of facetime with our customers and never hesitate to hop on a plane when our customers need support. Developing and maintaining strong customer relationships is essential. That’s why we always make the most of important industry tradeshows, keep in touch using technologies such as video conferencing, and take advantage of business travel to visit engineers at the facilities that house our installations.
Kimre engineers and application specialists have been solving process and gas stream emissions problems in chemical and fertilizer plants around the globe. How important is human capital to the business?
I cannot overemphasis the value of Kimre’s engineering knowledge – gained from its fifty-year history of designing customised solutions to air pollution and gas cleaning problems. With 40,000 plus successful installations worldwide, our expertise in many markets is unparalleled.
But that wealth of knowledge and expertise would be virtually worthless without the skill of our dedicated world-class engineers and application specialists: they are the backbone of our company. These outstanding employees, when designing a system today, have the advantage of being able to draw on Kimre’s decades of successful design and engineering solutions.
It would be remiss, though, not to recognise our equally invaluable manufacturing and production employees. They’re at the heart of the business, being responsible for ensuring that the design goes from paper to end product, quickly and precisely, whatever it takes.
I am very fortunate to have a team of this calibre as Kimre embarks on its second half-century.
Kimre has a reputation as being both a market leader and an innovator. Is product development and R&D still central for your current and future success?
While Kimre’s success is based upon the technology patented by our founder, we’re constantly looking for innovative ways to build on that technology and on our decades of experience. That has helped us to successfully identify new applications and environmental protection markets that can benefit from our engineering and design services. Successful innovations include the development of semi-crossflow scrubbing systems that, in fertilizer production, have achieved the lowest pollutant emissions in the world.
Improvements to our technology have helped scrubber manufacturers in the US, and across the world, achieve the lowest emissions for some of the most hazardous air pollutants identified by the US Environmental Protection Agency, including hexavalent chromic acid. We are currently working with industry partners to design new technologies and systems for reducing heavy metals – including mercury, lead and chrome – from flue gas emissions.
Are there regulatory and/or fertilizer industry trends that are shaping the market for clean air installations – and what is the balance currently between retrofits and new projects?
The fertilizer industry is continually developing new products and production processes, as well as tightening air pollution standards worldwide. Today’s scrubbing systems therefore need to balance low emission standards with customer and regulatory requirements, while at the same time minimising waste effluents and maximising on-line reliability. Thankfully, Kimre’s technology can deliver systems that meet all these targets, whether designing new equipment or working on retrofit installations.
We’re often approached to adapt our technology to existing scrubbing systems that don’t meet current performance requirements or have other related issues. Delivering solutions that can meet new requirements, especially for systems that were not originally designed for our products, is extremely rewarding – and illustrates the special capabilities of Kimre’s technologies and its employees.
I understand that you spend valuable free time on pro bono legal work to protect the rights of society’s most vulnerable. This must be something you’re very passionate about.
You have clearly done your homework, Simon! For me, there is nothing more rewarding than knowing you were able to positively change the trajectory of a person’s life, particularly a child or someone who is severely disadvantaged through no fault of their own.
Requiring the state of Washington to comply with federal law and dramatically increase the direct funding provided to the thousands of foster parents raising children in their care remains the highpoint of my legal career. While it took several years, I was able to drastically improve the benefits to which these children are entitled.
In some ways Simon, our conversation has gone full circle. Because the passion that drives my pro bono work is the same passion that drives my desire to expand the global reach of Kimre and its technology: a devotion to leaving the world a better place for future generations.
