From Rogers to Rio, Sustainability Firm Looks to go Global

A new brand of sustainability is being built in Rogers, and its name is EcoArk.

Blessed by influential investors, dazzling technology, old-fashioned know-how and contacts across four continents, EcoArk, headquartered at the JB Hunt Parkway Tower on Pinnacle Hills Parkway, is taking a universal approach to solving the vast problem of how to keep waste out of the landfill. EcoArk’s goal is to become so good and varied at waste recovery that going national, and then global, is not only possible, but inevitable.

Guided by big-box dynamo and visionary Randy May, EcoArk has recently acquired majority ownership in Intelleflex Corp., the Silicon Valley-based creator of ZEST, a farm-to-family food tracking system, and full ownership of SA Concepts, now called EcoVet, a Springdale-based company that repurposes over-the-road trailers into wood furniture.

EcoArk, a Delaware corp. registered in Arkansas, also has a joint venture with Palm Natural, an Arizona-based manufacturer of biodegradable dinner plates made of processed palm leaves. The assortment of companies represent the beginning, but certainly not the end, of EcoArk’s conglomeration.

“We’ll continue to build out on what compliments what we’re doing,” May said. “If it’s sustainable, renewable and diverts material from the landfill — that’s EcoArk.”

As long as a company fits the profile, EcoArk shouldn’t have a problem bringing it underneath its umbrella. The company is financed by 130 shareholders and a private equity firm, and though May would not disclose the identities of the individuals and entities that have invested in EcoArk, he did say access to financial support is in the billions.

As a parent company, EcoArk’s job is to inject its subsidiaries with the support and exposure needed to succeed. To that end, EcoArk has a team of decision makers with backgrounds, among others, in investor relations, manufacturing, retail, logistics, technology, waste management and entrepreneurship.

Expertise has to come from many directions if EcoArk is to fulfill its mission. May, a former divisional operations manager for Wal-Mart Stores Inc., relishes the challenge.

“It’s a huge opportunity,” he said.

 

Fresh and Frozen Food

EcoArk’s flagship company, and the one that could have the broadest global impact, is Intelleflex. Based in Santa Clara, Calif., the heart of Silicon Valley, the tech company has developed ZEST, a cloud-based data processing and analysis system that provides real-time information to the fresh- and frozen-food industries.

Under research and development since 2003, the technology has $90 million invested in it. Rather than having developed one or a few aspects of the tracking system, Intelleflex has achieved vertical integration with ZEST, meaning the hardware, chips, systems, systems software and application software are all creations of Intelleflex.

Utilizing a radio frequency identification tag inserted into a crate, ZEST can monitor the temperature and events from the moment strawberries are picked in Mexico to the time they arrive at a retail outlet in Springdale, and provide live updates throughout the strawberry crate’s journey through the supply chain. The aim of ZEST technology is to give distributors and retailers enough real-time alerts and instruction on corrective action to maximize shelf life for produce — particularly produce that’s experienced high temperatures or a significant slowdown during transport.

Timely data, delivered to a smartphone or tablet only when corrective action is needed, gives handlers enough information to make important decisions: Are the strawberries rerouted from Springdale to a closer location in Austin, Texas? Or are the strawberries immediately put out on the shelves when the shipment arrives at the Walmart Neighborhood Market at 3553 E. Robinson Ave.?

“The goal is to reduce waste,” said Peter Mehring, president and CEO of Intelleflex. “We shed light on the invisible ripening of food, and you can see it in the data.”

Mehring, a former VP of electrical design and technology at Apple Inc., said the Intelleflex system is miles ahead of the traditional method of monitoring fresh produce — measuring the ambient temperature of the entire trailer, the eyeball test and paper invoicing.

The Intelleflex model measures each individual crate and records more data over a longer period of time. Under the watchful eye of ZEST, the bad apple can literally be found before it spoils the whole bunch.

“You want to look at what needs attention,” Mehring said. “We can tell them in real time that pallet 23 needs special handling.”

Wasted produce is an epic problem in the United States. According to a USDA report issued in 2011, about 38.2 billion pounds of fruit and vegetables, valued at $42.8 billion, is lost domestically each year at the retail and consumer level. Once in the landfill, food waste produces high levels of methane emissions, but before it even arrives there, has already consumed water, land and energy. Globally, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates that as much as 45.7 percent of all fruits and vegetables go to waste each year during the full cycle of production to consumption.

Mehring wants to wade into the mess and make a difference.

“A technology company has to provide a solution,” he said.

If a retailer such as Walmart were to implement the Intelleflex system, more and more produce would make it to the kitchen table and less would end up in the waste bin.

“It starts to move the industry,” said Mehring, referring to the effect Walmart’s adoption of ZEST would have on other retailers, distributors and suppliers across the country and the world.

ZEST is currently being shopped to Walmart as well as to potential investors in China and Brazil, and there are plans to apply the technology to meat, seafood and dairy. ZEST is currently being used by a handful of grocers and fast-food chains.

 

Veterans Make Wages and Furniture

When EcoVet founder and career entrepreneur Don Vanhooser started tearing down decommissioned over-the-road trailers last year as SA Concepts, he knew he’d find plenty of aluminum. His plan was to take that material and repurpose it into aerodynamic skirting for new trailers, and that’s what he did.

Employing veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, Vanhooser figured he was doing the right thing by helping soldiers and the environment.

But along the way he found out that those old trailers had plenty of wood flooring in them. So much, in fact, he didn’t know what to do with it. But an employee asked if he could use some to build a chair, and Vanhooser agreed. A picture of that chair wound up on Facebook and was seen by the owner of The Green Submarine Espresso Café and Sub Shop in Fayetteville, who asked EcoVet to make a few pieces for his store.

Word spread — not just about the furniture but the soldiers making it — and less than two years into Vanhooser’s furniture enterprise, he’s about to go big.

In January, Sam’s Club will begin selling EcoVet’s kitchen tables, farmhouse tables, TV stands and butcher blocks online. And if negotiations work out, Vanhooser will repurpose old trailers into furniture for one of the world’s most prominent high-end retailers — Macy’s. 

“We saw pretty rapidly that we had something with the wood,” Vanhooser said. “From there it snowballed.”

While EcoVet still makes the wind skirts, those are expected to be standard issue on all trailers by 2016, so that part of the business will probably go away.

But not the furniture. A typical 53-foot trailer can yield enough wood to build six to eight conference tables, items that can retail for as much as $4,000. For 2014, EcoVet has its sights set on tearing down as many as 1,500 trailers and perhaps even moving to a larger facility than the 22,000-SF workhouse now under use in east Springdale.

Vanhooser touts the fact that his product is made of solid wood and crafted in the United States, whereas many traditional furniture makers use a lot of medium density fiberboard, wood from unknown sources, and have their manufacturing facilities in Vietnam and China.

The EcoVet business model calls for an expansion into new locations in other parts of the country. At least in terms of scale, there shouldn’t be any problems. According to the American Trucking Associations, as of 2011 there were 11.7 million registered trailers in the United States, enough to keep plenty of veterans busy for a long time.

Vanhooser has always worked with his hands and he’s always figured out how to turn a profit, something he did with his maintenance and construction company, Kleenco. His work with EcoVet is no different. He discovered that the best way to salvage a trailer’s wood is to cut the flooring into pieces, turn them over and remove the bolts with a plasma cutter. Whenever he sees a piece of furniture in a magazine, he builds something similar at his shop. And knowing that the wind skirt business will soon end, Vanhooser is already thinking about what to do with the reclaimed aluminum.

“It’s exciting stuff,” he said. “I’ve been an entrepreneur all my life and when you’re that kind of person, bigger is always better. The mountain is never high enough. We don’t quit and we don’t stop.”