Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, August 10, 1993 TAG: 9308100077
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PAT BROWN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
\ Chemsolv, a Roanoke chemical company, has made the list of the top 100 North American chemical distributors.
It's a distinction that holds special significance to Glenn Austin, owner of the 14-year-old company. He had to trade company stock for uncollectable debts, swim out of the office in 6 feet of water and rebuild the company after Roanoke's great flood of 1985.
CPI Purchasing, the chemical process industry's trade magazine, in its June issue compiled a list of 100 top companies based on annual revenues. Chemsolv tied with Aetna Chemical Corp. of New Jersey for 83rd, based on each company's report of $12 million in sales last year.
Austin, who came to Roanoke as district manager of Ashland Chemical Co. in the 1970s, said he started the outfit when he saw a "void in the market," a need for competition in the chemical supply business. He also saw a chance to counter the belief that people who wanted to get ahead needed to move out of the valley.
"We were fond of the area," he said of Roanoke.
Chemsolv is the only independent chemical distributor in town. Austin's direct competition is also his former employer. Ashland, a global operation, made the No. 2 spot in the top 100.
Austin joined two partners to start Chemsolv in l979. They bought a shell building at 1140 Industry Ave. and got a used tanker for $15,000. An equivalent new tanker today, Austin said, would cost $100,000, plus the cost of a truck to pull it.
But the partnership went sour when the other parties, who also owned a coal chemicals company, ran up a debt with Chemsolv that they were unable to pay.
Austin's solution was to erase their coal-company debts if his partners turned over their Chemsolv stock to him. "But the debts were worth more than the stock," he said, "so there was some bad blood." And the move required some special concessions from his own creditors. That was 1984, and the next year brought Austin another setback.
In the great Roanoke River flood, Chemsolv's employes headed for high ground - the railroad tracks.
But Austin remembered his gas chromatograph, a piece of lab equipment valued today at $15,000. He returned to the building to move the machine to second-floor safety. When he emerged, he had to bob through filthy floodwater.
"You could hear the [chemical storage] tanks clanking against each other" as they were lifted off their bases by the rising water. One was found far down the river in Vinton, and 50-gallon drums were returned to Chemsolv later from places around Smith Mountain Lake.
"We were wiped out," Austin said. "It would have been easier to walk away, but everybody banded together to save their jobs." And most of the company's offices, including the lab that houses the chromatograph, were moved to the second floor.
Today, the reception area downstairs looks more like the entrance to a law office than a business that focuses on products such as alcohol, sodium hydroxide and hydrocarbons. And it is a business that has come increasingly under the scrutiny of laws designed to protect the environment from chemical pollution.
"There's not a day that goes by that one of my trucks is not stopped for an inspection," Austin said. "Sometimes it's to the point that you would call it harassment, but really its just the DOT [Department of Transportation] doing their job." Equipment, he explained, has to be kept in top condition. A spill "could put a company out of business in a heartbeat."
Austin, whose early training was in accounting and finance with the Air Force rather than in chemistry, has seen many changes in the chemical distribution business. Since the Environmental Protection Agency's beginnings in the 1970s, distribution companies have had to do more to educate employes about the products they are handling. They have also had to maintain what Austin calls "cradle-to-grave" records on hazardous waste. They must meet standards for cleaning out barrels and tankers and declare what they are hauling before they load a truck.
Another change in the industry may help explain why Austin won't handle every chemical out there. His product liability insurance has increased from $2,000 to $120,000 per year.
"At first I tried to be everything to everybody," he said of his early years in the business. "But now I try to steer away from controversy." He said known carcinogens such as carbon tetrachloride and benzine will have to be provided by some other company. Austin also declines to distribute agricultural chemicals.
Instead, Chemsolv's trucks pull out loaded with alcohol that will go into coatings, inks and lacquers. Their contents might become the stuff industrial cleaners or metal finishing products are made of. Still others will be ingredients destined to become solvents or plastics.
At Chemsolv's inception, Austin could store 48,000 gallons of chemicals. Today its capacity is 350,000 gallons. Products go as far away as Alaska, where Chemsolv delivers de-icers for airport runways, and as close as Elizabeth Arden, a cosmetic manufacturer across town.
And Austin said he's ready for expansion. He has been looking for two years for a facility in Kingsport, Tenn., suitable for a distribution center. He said he views Kingsport as a market that reminds him of Roanoke when he started the business:
"It is slightly isolated and there is room for additional competition."
by CNB