Iron-strong plastics.

ORITEX AIMS TO USE ITS INDUSTRIAL PLASTICS TO PRODUCE LIGHTWEIGHT CHAINS STRONG ENOUGH TO PULL A TANK

Like many small business owners, Arthur Davis wants to steer his company in a new direction - but he has his hands full just keeping the ship afloat.

Davis owns South El Monte-based Oritex Corp., a plastic manufacturer that for 23 years has provided high-strength implements to Southern California waste water treatment plants.

With the fiscal tough times of the 1990s pressing down upon local governments including the 1995 bankruptcy by Orange County - Davis found himself facing an economic abyss.

"I saw us go from having more than $1 million in revenues (at the peak in 1994) to having less than $300,000 (at the bottom in 1996)," he said.

The situation has improved this year, but left Davis with a burning desire to diversify.

And in his years of working with high-strength plastics and composites, he believes he has discovered a terrific product: extra-strong, lightweight chains, which could used for everything from bicycles to making huge links for industrial purposes.

"Can you imagine the applications for this?" asks Davis, who holds advanced degrees in industrial engineering and metallurgy from the University of London and the University of Chicago, respectively.

"The market is world wide. In military, commercial, recreation - whenever and wherever somebody needs a chain that is light, or which will not corrode,' he said.

Imagine a tank stranded in the desert, said Davis. It needs to connect to another tank 30 yards head. An iron chain strong enough to pull a tank would weigh tons, he said. "But with a plastic chain, a single man could connect the two tanks."

In his factory, Davis has on display different chains. Some links are more than a foot long, other a couple inches. All are of various plastics, composites or fiberglass. Strengths are listed, into the hundreds of thousands of pounds.

For a visitor, he picks out a small link, about a half-inch wide, and 10 inches long. Under testing in a nearby machine, it snaps at 22,000 pounds, about 10 tons. "You could pick up a track with that," he said.

Davis has tests slated for the City of Los Angeles and an unidentified oil company to demonstrate his new chains and technologies, some of which are patented.

He has one chain-link, about the size of a bed pillow, that he expects to snap - but only when tugged with 2 million pounds of pressure.

But as with other small businesses, he complains about being hampered by the lack of funds for marketing, and by having contacts, for both his sewage products and the potential chain business. "Sometimes it's not what you know, it's who you know," he said, referring to municipal contracting practices.

A five-person shop, Oritex has survived to date not by making exotic chains as would be Davis' wont, but by providing large plastic sprockets and drive shafts used in municipal wastewater treatment plants.

The 20-foot-long shafts, and 30-inch diameter sprockets are made of wound fiberglass, graphite composites and ultra-high molecular weight polyethelene, a very strong plastic.

The big sprockets help drive sewage tank collectors, which scrap sludge off of tank walls.

Oritex's components are strong, and do not corrode - an important advantage in a wastewater treatment plant, in which corrosion is a constant concern.

By the time sludge water gets to the City of Los Angeles' Hyperion treatment plant, it is oozing sulphur - worse, ferric chloride is added, making for an acidic brew, according to Carl Rogers, city maintenance manager at the plant.

"The sludge is very, very corrosive," said Rogers. "Iron will pit and corrode." Rogers said Oritex' products and components are known for durability.

But Oritex parts are also expensive, even by Davis' admission: "We cost about six times as much as iron. But we last four times as long," he said. The parts are bought because expensive downtime is avoided.

Oritex has survived more than two decades producing what Davis calls the "Rolls-Royce" of implements for Hyperion and other sewage treatment plants.

But fortunes have not been made. Davis, who has never drawn a salary but always planned to, had to postpone indefinitely the thought of an owner's draw when municipalities began to declare bankruptcy.

But recently, the picture has become less cloudy for Davis. Orange and Los Angeles counties, and the City of Los Angeles, "are beginning to order again."

He also is circulating a business plan, with the hopes of raising $850,000 from a minority business partner, who would be interested in marketing. There are the upcoming tests of his new chains and links for possible major buyers.

Davis even sees a market in bicycle chains. "A plastic chain would weigh ounces," he said. "And I can make miles of the stuff."

Spotlight

Oritex Corp.

Year founded: 1974

Core business: Manufacture of extra-strong immersible non-metallic parts for sewage treatment plants

Top executive/owner: Arthus Davis

Revenues in 1993: $1 million

Revenues in 1997: $600,000-$625,000 (est.)

Employees in 1993: 7

Employees in 1997: 5

Goal: To tie-up new markets in plastic-composite chains

Driving force: Proving that plastic composite chains can be widely used