Thank you for the invitation.
I'm Bruce Linton, the CEO of a company called Clearford Industries.
Clearford, I think, is similar in some ways to many companies in Canada, in that we have a long history going back more than 20 years, yet we're a small company—and we would have remained a small company or even disappeared if we had stayed in Canada. In 2009, we determined that our future would be much brighter if we exported to the part II countries--the developing world--as defined by the World Bank, .
In 2009 we had almost exactly enough capital in the bank to allow us either to spend all of it pursuing international markets or to spend half of it pursuing international markets and then failing there and probably at home. So our board decided that it would all be for the international markets—100%. In the first year, we had to validate our product in that market. We have a method of collecting waste water and converting it into two outcomes: clean water for reuse and biogas that gets carbon credits and makes energy.
We thought that if we could be successful in the first 12 months, we'd be able to raise sufficient capital to continue the business. It's from that perspective that we made contact with the trade commissioners. We had an urgent and focused priority. I should add that the only reason we knew about them is that there was a deputy minister of Foreign Affairs three years ago who took the list of the top 40 under 40 award recipients in Ottawa, sent each of us an invitation to lunch, and said she would like to meet us. A free lunch sounded good, so we all went. Her name was Marie-Lucie Morin. I paraphrased her message, when it was my time to speak, which was, “If you need help, call the government”. She essentially confirmed for us that there were 1,300 people around the world who could work for free for us, if we were smart enough to call them, and that we should. And we did.
It was from that baseline knowledge and that perspective that we made contact. To date we've used twelve offices in eight countries to pursue and establish our initial contracts in Peru and India. We believed that the lineup to buy our offerings, as a second customer in those geographies, would be quite substantial. To get the first contacts was quite difficult. We relied on two things for every prospect and project that we were pursuing. One was the trade commissioners, and the second was political missions, which I would argue the trade commissioners were quite active in organizing. They put together teams. What they did for us was bring to the room the people who could either be our customers or our partners, and it's from that perspective that we moved forward.
If I were to offer one input on something that I think could make it faster for us in other countries, and for any small to medium enterprise following us, it would be that trade commissioners not be organized according to what its clients like us do. We're broadly called clean tech. I think everything's clean tech. I did a presentation in India and asked everybody who's not in the clean tech business to put a hand up, and not one person put a hand up. There were about 400 people in the audience; they were all in clean tech.
What I would ask is that the trade commissioners reorganize based on outcomes, which are purchases by end customers. In our case, our procurement is either with a private sector developer or a municipal corporation responsible for water and infrastructure. On that basis, they would be measured on how many new clients or end buyers are procured for the small to medium enterprises that enter the country. It would either be on the basis of an incremental bonus or a core goal. I think the procurement process in many of the countries is more complicated than about just discovering the need or the potential customer.
I'll leave it at that. I'd be happy to answer detailed questions on our technology, but I suspect that not many will arise on how you collect sewage more efficiently in the developing world.