1. La Silesia has been able to produce huge amounts of dry ice for the pharma industry due to the current situation with Covid-19. What is the situation with competitors in Colombia and how were you able to position yourself?
Because of the lockdown, we had a very poor month in March since our clients were almost entirely located in the food industry. We considered that we needed a drastic change in our commercial target so we focused on the pharma industry, which would undoubtedly be the leading industry in dry ice consumption. Colombia has a difficult challenge in terms of ground transportation due to the lack of infrastructure and geographic complexity. This makes dry ice the most suitable option in order to maintain cold chain requirements in non-refrigerated trucks for long period of time. Therefore, we directed our efforts towards this industry since we knew that a massive number of COVID-19 tests would be required, which could only be processed in big cities.
We were able to position ourselves mainly because we focused on dry ice availability; a key factor for labs and pharmaceutical companies. Given the deficit of dry ice producers, we knew that being able to offer dry ice 24/7, would give us an advantage over our competitors. Relying on our ASCO dry ice pelletizers allowed us to deploy this strategy successfully.
2. How much dry ice per week does the ASCO Pelletizer A120P produce and what is your forecast in terms of production capacity in the next months?
It is still uncertain what the nominal behavior of the market will be, so we are being extremely careful in determining an accurate number for production capacity planning. In fact we recently ordered a new pelletizer, but not based on the current consumptions, since we consider them to be contaminated, but on our strategic roadmap planning which involves dry ice blasting as one of the pillars for the business in the short term.
3. Beside Covid-19 - what are your plans and projects for the next year?
As I mentioned before, we see a huge opportunity in dry ice blasting in the short term. Regulatory measures in food industries requiring companies to clean well but spending less water is definitely an opportunity we cannot miss, without mentioning the great amount of companies dedicated to plastics, foundries, power generation and other dry ice blasting-related industries that operate in our region.
Additionally, we are working in a cold shipping project that will be have many applications, especially in the food and pharma industry. The COVID-19 vaccination, in case an ARN-type platform succeeds, will pose a huge challenge on this industry due to the extreme cold chain requirements. We intend to provide an integral solution based on dry ice in order to help logistics companies, labs and even the government in order to distribute the vaccine effectively. In South America, generally speaking, the distribution infrastructure is concentrated in central cities, so it will be crucial to find ways in order to guarantee the capilarity of the vaccines in the entire territory, particularly for isolated community. This is not only a commercial initiative but also an intention to help in the COVID-19 crisis, which will subsequently benefit us and the economy in general.
4. What are the most common applications for dry ice in Colombia? How ready to market is dry ice in general in Colombia?
Food and pharmaceutical industries stand out above the others. However, we have done an important job trying to diversify our market. We have found important opportunities in medical cannabis, supercritical fluid extractions with solid CO2, metal working assemblies by cryogenic contraction, among others. Dry ice has huge potential in a country like Colombia, however we have an important task ahead educating the consumers with the purpose of materializing all our existing projects.
5. Can you please shortly introduce La Silesia?
We are a Colombian company, formed by three entrepreneurs in 2018. Our company was conceived under three fundamental pillars: Data, technology and environmental sustainability. We are committed to innovate responsibly, generating new business opportunities.
All the way from the start, we found a trustworthy partner, who has supported us all the way through this journey. ASCO technology has definitely been one of the best choices we have made. Reliability and good service have been crucial to our development. We wish, as we said in the first ever meeting we had at the ASCO facilities, that this continues to be a long and successful commercial relationship for many years.
Caption: Pellets in bag in front of the ASCO Pelletizer A120P |
Caption: Logo La Silesia |