Architect Liza Morales does not want to capitalize on people’s fear of the coronavirus pandemic, but the absence of a vaccine or cure to the disease forced business establishments to look for alternatives such as disinfection solutions that can repel the virus in closed environments such as hotels, restaurants, offices and factories.
Morales is the chief executive of Philippine GeoGreen Inc., a leading provider of sustainable technology that started providing energy-efficient cooling solutions more than a decade ago.
“Philippine Geogreen has been around for 12 years. We are a provider of green and sustainable technologies in the Philippines. We have worked with some of the top 500 companies in the Philippines. We have also worked with residential homes and offices,” she says.
This year, she formed GeoClean—a business arm of Philippine GeoGreen to provide smart solutions to businesses and households and allow them to cope with the pandemic and other infectious diseases that undermine productivity and the broader economy.
“What we had to do during the pandemic is pivot to new technologies that have allowed us to adapt, survive or thrive during this time,” she says.
Morales says FreshAire UVC and Big Ass Fans Clean Air technologies, both imported from the US, can reduce by 99.9 percent the presence in the air of SARS Cov2—the coronavirus strain that causes COVID-19.
“These products were well received this year,” she says. “We are doing better than I initially expected.”
Morales believes in the ability of ultraviolet-C in inactivating viruses and bacteria in the air. “UVC technology has been around for 25 years. Third-party tests show it is effective,” she says.
The US Food and Drug Administration, in its website, confirms that UVC radiation is a known disinfectant for air, water and nonporous surfaces. “UVC radiation may also be effective in inactivating the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which is the virus that causes COVID-19,” the agency says.
Morales says FreshAire UVC products have disinfection capability that work well with existing heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems, while Big Ass Fans have built-in mechanisms that provide ventilation, ultraviolet light and needlepoint ionization disinfection systems.
“When we launched FreshAire UVC, the response was really great across all the verticals—commercial, offices, BPOs, hotels and residential,” she says.
Morales says while there are no data yet to measure the size of the Philippine disinfection industry, the potential of the market is enormous.
“There are 54 million square meters of spaces that need disinfection. These include sports complexes, shopping malls, restaurants, schools, airports and public spaces. There is a huge market for it and I see the potential for that,” she says.
Morales says the mission of GeoClean is to provide cutting-edge technology for the new normal. “GeoClean aims to provide high-class disinfection technology that offers Filipinos innovative solutions that will help ease their woes as we face the pandemic as a community,” she says.
GeoClean offers products certified by the US Environmental Protection Agency, UL Standards and other internationally-recognized product standards, according to Morales.
“We have an exciting array of products in the pipeline, extremely diverse, yet complementary to each other. One thing they do have in common is that these products will help with achieving our company’s vision of making everyone feel much safer,” Morales says.
Morales says that as the government gradually reopens the economy, smart and cost-effective solutions offered by GeoClean offer a distinct advantage for businesses.
She says that like products sold by GeoGreen, disinfection systems offered by GeoClean for hotels, homes, sports complexes, shopping malls, restaurants, offices, industrial facilities and others pay for themselves in as short as one year as they reduce the cost of maintaining air conditioning systems and bring down energy cost due to improved efficiency.
Morales believes that the solutions provided by GeoClean can outlive the pandemic as they can also be used to make cooling solutions more energy efficient.
“I am hoping that the need for air disinfection becomes obsolete, if we find the cure for the virus and we get the vaccine. We don’t want air disinfection to become the main driver for growth and play up on the fear of people. I am hoping that people will buy it not because they are afraid of COVID, but because they want to make their air-conditioning system more energy-efficient,” she says.
Morales, however, encourages other entrepreneurs to seize opportunities in the market to survive the pandemic.
“I guess my advice to entrepreneurs is to really just be agile, easily adapt and be open-minded with regards to opportunities out there. The situation is different. It creates challenges but it also creates opportunities,” she says.
“You just have to go boldly and venture outside your comfort zone to be able to explore what’s out there,” she says.