JWC Environmental LLC makes Monsters in Santa Ana.
The green creatures are built for a dirty job. They live in water treatment facilities and pump stations, where they filter out solid waste from sewer water. Then they chew up the solids to prevent clogging, turning them into material for landfill.
JWC has headquarters in Costa Mesa, and designs and manufactures the machines at its Santa Ana plant. It also has factories in Buford, Ga., Cheshire, U.K., and Hangzhou, China.
The machines, which bring in an estimated $50 million in annual sales, are marketed under the Monster brand name, a product line with more than 200 variations of grinders, screens and processing systems. They are installed at municipal wastewater treatment stations, airports, prisons and recreational facilities, among others, across the U.S. and abroad.
Windjammer Buy
Newport Beach-based private equity firm Windjammer Capital Investors acquired JWC last August for an undisclosed price in a debt-and-equity deal. Windjammer manages about $1.2 billion of capital, and targets companies with gross earnings of $10 million to $40 million.
JWC was established in 1973 in Santa Ana by Joseph and Woodie Chambers, a father-son team. The younger Chambers had been running it after his father died until the deal with Windjammer came along.
“It worked,” said Ronald Duecker, JWC’s president. “The next generation wasn’t going to take over. [Woodie] felt comfortable trusting the company to Windjammer.”
The new owner also got some firm ties to OC when it got JWC.
The company’s factory in Santa Ana is its largest, according to Alec Mackie, marketing manager.
About two-thirds of JWC’s entire work force of 165 is at the Santa Ana plant, where the manufacturing process puts a premium on experience.
“We have a long-tenured and expert staff which would have been nearly impossible to replace had we moved,” said Duecker, a 34-year veteran of the company. “We worked hard to maintain our competitive edge rather than join the wagon train of manufacturers rolling out of the state.”
There are other benefits to being in OC.
“We have easy access to ports for our international shipments, plenty of educational institutions from which to draw talent and train staff, [and] a large pool of sub-suppliers to access,” Duecker said.
Basic Principle
All of the activity stems from a basic principle of plumbing that Duecker puts simply: Fibrous material gets stuck.
Whatever gets stuck is ground up by JWC’s Monster machines, which start by sucking sewer water into dual-shaft grinders that shred whatever they can—everything from rags to bits of wood and even occasional car parts—into a mush that’s known as “muffins” in the wastewater trade.
The muffins need to go somewhere, and JWC has another machine to handle that job.
“The Auger Monster is used to take the stuff you just ground up out,” said Mark Upton, vice president of operations. “Wash the fecal and the soluble, and push the insoluble out. It comes out through the other end. It’s sent to landfills or to incineration, or it gets compacted even more.”
The Monsters can cost as little as $10,000 and as much as $150,000, according to Duecker. They weigh up to 10,000 pounds and stand as high as 10 feet. JWC has shipped more than 35,000 machines since it started in 1973. Its customers cover the globe—one of the machines went to the McMurdo Station research center in Antarctica.
OC Customers
JWC’s Monsters hang out closer to home, too.
The Moulton Niguel Water District in Laguna Beach provides water and wastewater services to a roster of OC cities that includes Aliso Viejo, Dana Point, Laguna Niguel and Mission Viejo.
It moves millions of gallons of sewage to treatment plants, with 17 sewage lift stations and 56 water reuse facilities in its service area.
Moulton Niguel had problems with clogged pumps before installing three of JWC’s Macho Monster grinders. The machines have helped shred trash, rags, clothing and other debris into tiny particles that flow through pumps and pipelines and later are removed by screens.
A lift station near the Aliso Creek pumps a million gallons of wastewater a day. The station also had problems with rags and solids clogging up the pipes before getting a Macho Monster in 2008.
JWC has also made a name for itself by being nimble when it comes to designing products to fit changing demands, said Duecker.
The onset of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s was one.
“The use of condoms increased, and it got more problematic,” he said. “We had to redesign our cutter within a matter of less than a year to help deal with latex waste. It was an external input that we had to respond to because our clients were having this issue.”
Gulf Clean-Up
The company also helped clean up the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.
“The boats were scooping up bird, wood, (and) fish along with the oil,” Upton said. “If you vacuum that up, they all get in the pump.”
Operators from cleanup boats called on JWC for Monster machines to grind through the debris. Upton estimated the company shipped more than 100 machines for the oil-spill clean-up.
“Every boat coming in wanted one,” Upton said. “We jumped on it. We were building night and day, supplying out on weekends. And it’s opened up other opportunities for us, too.”
