Plainview water firm sells first system
PureSafe Water Systems chief executive Leslie Kessler holds water purified by the company. PureSafe sold a system last week that costs $265,000. (Nov. 4, 2011) Credit: Steve Pfost
A one-time Hempstead elementary schoolteacher is beginning to turn around a water purification company that had only $17,000 left in the bank and zero sales when she took over in 2007.
Last week tiny PureSafe Water Systems Inc. of Plainview reported the first sale of its First Response Water System, a trailer-sized machine that produces up to 30,000 gallons of purified water a day, enough to support a population of more than 45,000 people. The buyer is Alaska's Department of Military and Veterans Affairs.
The system, which is mobile and can be airlifted, sells for $265,000. In addition, the company said it is renting another system for six months to Texas-based RecyClean Inc., which services the oil and gas industry. The system is designed to purify water in floods or other disasters or emergencies.
Leslie J. Kessler, 64, who in the 1970s was a teacher at Hempstead's Franklin Avenue school and later went into the financial industry, starting her own medical equipment company in Florida in the mid-1990s, came to PureSafe in 2007.
"It had problems," said Kessler, who took over after being contacted by some unhappy shareholders she knew. "They had only $17,000 in their bank account," she said.
She wrote a $50,000 check to the company, asked other executives to contribute as well, raised other money from family and friends, and for the next four years took no salary.
The company is just beginning to make sales and is not yet profitable. Kessler said after 20 systems are sold PureSafe is expected to break even and soon after will make money.
The company has 11 employees and plans to hire at least 12 more. Manufacturing of more systems will be done in Plainview, Kessler said. PureSafe, whose stock -- at about 9 cents a share -- trades over the counter, won a competitive bid to supply its system to Alaska. The system is to be delivered next year.
Michael Balboni, a former state senator and the state's deputy secretary for public safety in the administrations of governors Eliot Spitzer and David A. Paterson, recently served as an adviser to PureSafe.
"I saw it and thought it was game-changing technology," said Balboni.
Kessler said she has a passion for clean water. "I started to read a lot about the epidemics" from dirty drinking water, she said. "I want to make a difference in this world."
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