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Speaker 1: Now I always love hearing about great things happening in

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Speaker 1: the Northern Territory and an innovative Darwin business is planning

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Speaker 1: to manufacture and commercialize unique water purification systems. They're then

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Speaker 1: going to be used by the Australian Defense personnel in

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Speaker 1: military operations as well as disaster response and humanitarian aid efforts.

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Speaker 2: Now Life h.

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Speaker 1: Two and the Northern Territory Government are co investing two

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Speaker 1: point five million dollars in the project, allowing the company

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Speaker 1: to scale up, creating fifteen full time jobs over the

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Speaker 1: next five years. And the founder joins me in the

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Speaker 1: studio right now, Charlie Feros.

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Speaker 2: Good morning to you.

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Speaker 3: Morning.

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Speaker 1: I've just had a bit of an issue with my

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Speaker 1: microphone there, Charlie. I'm not too sure what's gone on.

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Speaker 1: I'm going to have to try and sort that out

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Speaker 1: very quickly. Just bear with me a moment. I don't

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Speaker 1: think I'm going to be able to sort that one out,

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Speaker 1: So Charlie, if I can, I might just get you

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Speaker 1: to pop over there. Nothing like a bit of behind

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Speaker 1: the scenes while we're on air. Let's try that again.

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Speaker 3: Good morning, Charlie, Good morning Katie. How are you.

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Speaker 1: I've been better my microphones to smallen off its off

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Speaker 1: the desk.

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Speaker 2: But don't worry about that now.

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Speaker 1: Charlie tell us a little bit more about this project.

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Speaker 4: Well, we're a family owned business, an innovative startup, and

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Speaker 4: we've created be working with this trained Defense Force on

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Speaker 4: a concept to fill capability gaps. So basically, at present,

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Speaker 4: the ADF have large scale, containerized water treatment systems and

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Speaker 4: nothing below that. So we've there's been a lot of

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Speaker 4: instances where we've spoken to excerving members that have dealt

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Speaker 4: with major events such as the tsunami in Java and

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Speaker 4: places like that, and they've admitted that they've had all

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Speaker 4: this great equipment, i haven't been able to get it

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Speaker 4: in all the heavy equipment into where it was needed.

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Speaker 4: So we've actually developed off grid man portable water purification

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Speaker 4: equipment that can travel with you know, travel with men

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Speaker 4: or on light vehicles, or be air dropped all that

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Speaker 4: sort of stuff.

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Speaker 1: And look, it sounds like pretty phenomenal stuff because, as

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Speaker 1: you've said there, you know, in some of these situations,

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Speaker 1: whether you're talking about defense or whether you're talking about

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Speaker 1: humanitarian aid situation, you would need to make this process

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Speaker 1: pretty mobile and be able to get it there. Really

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Speaker 1: rather quickly, you know, even if you're talking about a

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Speaker 1: tsunami that needs to happen pretty fast, doesn't it.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right.

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Speaker 4: And the current response in a lot of areas is

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Speaker 4: to use bottle water, so goodles a bottle of water,

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Speaker 4: which obviously creates a plastic waste issue and all that

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Speaker 4: sort of stuff. So if you've got light, you know,

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Speaker 4: self sustaining equipment for floods, for cyclones or a lot

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Speaker 4: of events, then you've got a lot of water, but

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Speaker 4: you can't drink it. Yeah, we can actually treat the

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Speaker 4: water on site and be able to administer that water

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Speaker 4: without having the logistic movements and the plastic waste and

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Speaker 4: all that.

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Speaker 1: Now, Madam'm not expecting you to share your trade secrets,

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Speaker 1: but how exactly does this system, like, how does it

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Speaker 1: sort of work?

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Speaker 4: Basically, there's a Yeah, I won't get into the technicalities,

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Speaker 4: you'll probably fall asleep on me. Yeah, basically, we've taken

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Speaker 4: a number of different processes to be able to treat virtually.

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Speaker 3: Any type of water. So you know, borewater the in the.

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Speaker 4: Territory, or surface water or seawater can be all dealt

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Speaker 4: within the one system. So, for example, the first Combat

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Speaker 4: Engineer Regiment have had systems in service for the last

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Speaker 4: two years and they've deployed overseas to team or and

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Speaker 4: dealt with salt water or they've had exercises with the

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Speaker 4: US Marines out in Bradshaw, YEP where they're dealing with

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Speaker 4: you know.

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Speaker 3: Pretty bad boarwater.

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Speaker 4: I'm told I've actually been thanked by a lot of

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Speaker 4: the serving members out there saying that the water quality

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Speaker 4: was much better when they were using my system.

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Speaker 1: And so the systems obviously already in place in a

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Speaker 1: number of locations, is that.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, So we've worked directly with the first Combat Engineer

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Speaker 4: Regiment at Robinson. The idea was to take the pain

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Speaker 4: early and do a user based design, where we're designing

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Speaker 4: system with the boots on the ground they have to

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Speaker 4: use it. So that does a lot of things as well,

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Speaker 4: where it creates barriers to entry as well, because we're

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Speaker 4: fit for purpose systems for the people who need to

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Speaker 4: administer the technology and use the capability.

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Speaker 1: So really trying to make it as practical as possible

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Speaker 1: by the sounds of things.

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Speaker 4: That's right, Yeah, and we can translate into many different

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Speaker 4: sectors as well. And you know, obviously you know people

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Speaker 4: have thrown scenarios at me for remote communities. Obviously, ecotourism

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Speaker 4: in remote locations as well. What tends to make the

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Speaker 4: grain nomads move on is.

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Speaker 2: The water quality.

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Speaker 4: If you want them to stay lone, you improve the water. Yeah,

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Speaker 4: so we've got there's a long way to go. That way,

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Speaker 4: we can even move into We've had talks with government

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Speaker 4: and others about water. Pure water or deionized water is

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Speaker 4: a crucial element for hydrogen production as well, so we're

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Speaker 4: able to achieve that also.

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Speaker 2: Now, how did you come up with this concept?

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Speaker 1: How did you decide that you were you know that

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Speaker 1: you were going to go down this path. You're having

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Speaker 1: a couple of beers and thought, I'm going to come

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Speaker 1: up with a purification process for water that's mobile.

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Speaker 3: Years and years ago.

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Speaker 4: I used to when I was a fitter man. I

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Speaker 4: used to do a lot of checking in South America

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Speaker 4: and things like that. And if you're on a three

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Speaker 4: or a week long track, you can't carry enough water

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Speaker 4: to sustain yourself. So you need to be able to

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Speaker 4: use methods to treat water. So I guess that's where

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Speaker 4: the fascination started. And then I used to spend my

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Speaker 4: previous career was in property development where we dealt with

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Speaker 4: water quality, leaving development sites and things like that.

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Speaker 3: So I worked.

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Speaker 4: Closely with environmental engineers and the like, mentioning the drinks.

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Speaker 4: The Probably the move to Darwin was probably over a

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Speaker 4: few too many red wines with my wife, my lovely

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Speaker 4: wife who supports all my hair brain schemes. Yeah, we

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Speaker 4: sort of recognized my wife's from South America, South Africa.

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Speaker 3: Sorry, I'm from regional Australia.

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Speaker 4: And you know, you can build a kilometer high skyscraper

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Speaker 4: in Jubai, you can take a passenger flight into space. Yeah,

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Speaker 4: but not every man, woman and child on the planet

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Speaker 4: can have clean access to clean drinking water. So we

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Speaker 4: feel that that is a bit of a failure.

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Speaker 3: On mankind's past.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 4: And for my little three year old turns around one

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Speaker 4: day and says, we love what mum and dad did

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Speaker 4: with life.

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Speaker 3: H two A. That would be that would be absolutely fantastic.

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Speaker 1: Good on you guys. It sounds like an incredible concept.

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Speaker 1: And then you know, being able to actually put this

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Speaker 1: into practice, particularly in some of those humanitarian AIDS situations,

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Speaker 1: it sounds like it's a fantastic thing to do. Tell me,

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Speaker 1: like at the moment, again understanding that you're running a

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Speaker 1: business and that there is some stuff you can't go into.

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Speaker 1: But whereabouts are you currently sort of doing this? Do

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Speaker 1: you have a number of you know, of the purification

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Speaker 1: systems already in place around the territory.

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Speaker 3: Mainly in defense at the moment.

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Speaker 4: And we've just the announcement from the Chief Minister on

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Speaker 4: Monday was enabled us to move in last month to

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Speaker 4: a larger.

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Speaker 3: Facility at Winnelly the golf center.

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Speaker 4: And yeah, we're actually creating a production facility there and

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Speaker 4: we've already started creating a handful of jobs and where

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Speaker 4: you hope to move that forward and gain a lot

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Speaker 4: more momentum.

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Speaker 2: Well, all the very best.

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Speaker 1: Like I say, I think it sounds like a wonderful thing,

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Speaker 1: you know, to be able to do that, And as

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Speaker 1: you pointed out that you know it is so it's

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Speaker 1: so bizarre, isn't it that you can have a building

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Speaker 1: that's a kilometer high, but we can't have drinking water

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Speaker 1: for everybody.

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Speaker 2: So it does sound like a fantastic thing to be doing.

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Speaker 1: I really appreciate you coming into the studio this morning

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Speaker 1: and having a chat to us about it.

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Speaker 3: Thanks very much.

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Speaker 2: Thank you, thanks so much,