BI Pure Water keeps water primed for a better future
Photo of Scott Fraser, the president of Vancouver-based BI Pure Water.
Scott Foster has an abiding love of nature and a saying he keeps close to his heart, “Money doesn’t solve problems, people solve problems.”
The president of Vancouver-based BI Pure Water is accustomed to solving water-treatment problems worldwide. It’s part of his passion for nature.
“We take the minerals, we take the trees, but we don’t put a value on our air or our water and … realize that we need air and we need water to survive,” says Foster.
His company designs and builds water-treatment solutions, from small pumps and filters all the way up to entire treatment plants packed into shipping containers.
And they can deal with a wide range of contamination.
“Mercury, leaching from landfill batteries and washing machines, is collected by groundwater and rain and enters our waterways,” notes Foster.
The challenge of contamination can take many forms. Foster recalls a time in India where a textile factory manager explained they stopped trying to remove the colour green from their run-off water because it was too stubborn.
“I said, ‘Well let me have a try.’ So I pulled out a little pilot plant, and I ran the water through, and in two minutes it was clear. It was amazing to solve something they had spent years working on and had given up on.”
The solutions that BI Pure Water designs and manufactures are ready to ship around the world—even to remote sites that are hard to access.
“You can actually make a fairly large system with a small mobile container that can be shipped,” says Foster. “We’ve done it with helicopters, we’ve done it with icebreakers with the Canadian Coast Guard, with trucking, we’ve used trains—our solutions are easily mobile.”
Foster says being in a stable country allows the company to think long term and develop technology that can help the rest of the world.
“It’s something that’s home-grown in Canada that provides solutions worldwide where governments aren’t stable, where there’s overpopulation, and we’re able to provide those different technologies at a reasonable cost.”
Foster says BI Pure Water was able to establish a presence in many countries because they worked with the Canadian government’s Trade Commissioner Service.
“They have a really strong trade commission group that allowed them to travel with us, enhancing our credibility and introducing us to potential clientele that we would never normally get access to. So all in all, working with the Canadian government doing trade internationally has been very beneficial for us.”
BI Pure Water recently submitted a proposal to provide water-treatment services at a resort in Vietnam—a deal that could be helped along by Canada’s recent trade agreement with countries in the Asia-Pacific region, the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).
Wherever BI Pure Water does business, a truly Canadian spirit guides their work, something that Scott Foster does not take for granted.
“Canada has a certain reputation—we take pride in our nature, we take pride in the way we look at things, and the way we’re looked at by others in society.”
BI Pure Water is keeping that reputation primed around the world.
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