How about a car or truck that needs an oil change once a year or less? Alex Weil says he can make it happen.
Weil is president and majority owner of Marine Oil Technology, a startup manufacturer that recently opened its doors in downtown San Pedro.
The company makes an aftermarket oil filtration device that it claims reduces the need for oil changes by 90 percent. That means, for example, truckers who might change their oil monthly could perhaps go a year or more without one.
“We could save millions of gallons per year,” said Weil, 72, a retired aerospace engineer who’s been developing the technology since 1999. “Basically it would improve fuel efficiency and lower pollution.”
The football-size device, which operates while an engine is running, employs a cotton filter to remove solid particles larger than 1 micron and uses heat to filter out liquid impurities.
The company recently got a leg up from PortTech LA, a non-profit formed last year by the Port of Los Angeles in partnership with the San Pedro Peninsula and Wilmington chambers of commerce. Its mission is to “incubate” new technologies in environment, clean energy, transportation logistics and homeland security.
“This has lots of potential,” said PortTech Chairman Herb Zimmer, noting the filter has been tested on several trucks and ships in the port. “It makes oil last virtually forever. You rarely will have to change oil.”
In addition to providing Weil with inexpensive office space at its 700-square-foot facility in San Pedro, the non-profit is providing him with counseling on raising capital, marketing and operating his business.
“Our goal is to help create businesses which will then create jobs,” Zimmer said. “We want those jobs to stay in San Pedro.”
Weil bought the patent for the oil processing device more than a decade ago and has been manufacturing it through a company in Sweden where, he acknowledged, “it never took off.” The Rancho Palos Verdes resident said he was unable to properly market the device in the Scandinavian country while living in the United States.
Weil said he is up against a handful of competitors nationwide that make oil filters that claim to reduce the need for changes. Among them is Puradyn Filter Technologies, a Boynton, Fla., company that makes a similar filter with a heating component.
However, Weil believes by locating in San Pedro he will be at a competitive advantage to sell to the thousands of ships and trucks at the port.
He estimates he will need $1 million to open a local manufacturing plant.
Taking Care of Business
Florence Keller has one major task remaining before closing down her North Hollywood home furnishing manufacturing plant July 18 after 30 years: finding jobs for every one of her 16 employees.
“I’m not willing to throw them out to the wolves especially in this environment,” said Keller. “Some of them have been with me for 25 years; they’re part of my life and my family.”
Keller, 55, started FR Industries in 1980 with $50 in a garage. As a young woman, she had spent a year in Israel, where she picked up the practice of sewing decorative fabric toilet paper holders. She brought the idea home, expanded on it, hired sewers and eventually had a 10,000-square-foot factory and retail business that, at its height in 2005, was selling about $6 million worth of products each year.
The company’s niche: high-end fabric-covered bath accessories, shower curtains, coordinated towel ensembles and other custom-designed home furnishing products.
Then, in early 2009, the bottom fell out.
Expo Design Center, a subsidiary of Home Depot and her biggest customer, shut its doors. Other buyers began reducing their vendor base, and many chains, hit with a slump in consumer spending, started focusing on cheaper products.
But Keller wasn’t ready to throw in the towel. For a time she tried selling directly to the public, offering what she described as “higher quality for half the price.” The high cost of advertising, however, nipped that in the bud.
Later she rented a low-cost “pop-up” store in Studio City, paying month by month, and things picked up. Another company signed a long-term lease, however, and the store was gone.
“We returned to North Hollywood thinking that thousands of people would follow us back,” Keller recalls. “But that never happened; people just weren’t willing to make the 12-minute drive.”
Since deciding to close, Keller has been in touch with several other companies – including some competitors – regarding taking on her crew. After receiving an initial commitment from trendy clothing maker American Apparel to hire everyone, she said, the company backed off. But Keller’s still trying.
“I think I’m pretty close,” she said.
Staff reporter David Haldane can be reached at [email protected] or at 323-549-5225, ext. 225.
