Ecoprod director Marcus Rose recently attended the inaugural UK ALSD International event in London. Whilst there, he was interviewed by Katie McIntyre of Sports Venue Business.

Katie – We are here with Marcus Rose, managing director of Ecoprod. Ecoprod are the UK distributors for URIMAT who are one of the exhibitions at the ALSD international event here in London. Marcus, can you tell us a bit about Ecoprod and the URIMAT product?

Marcus – Yes, so Ecoprod bought the URIMAT technology into the UK in 2007. We set the business up to specialise in water and energy saving products for commercial washrooms. My background is that I am a mechanical engineer by trade and we saw that the URIMAT technology was unique and special. We got our springboard into the UK market through McDonalds restaurants nationally. They were happy to meet their water strategy target with just one product, which was a very quick major success for us. But the major success for us in stadia is the recent specification of the URIMAT technology for the new White Hart Lane Stadium for Tottenham. It is the first stadium in the UK, I might say, that’s going to have urinal bowls as opposed to the traditional urinal troughs (which are now, to be quite honest, seriously dated). So that’s a success story right there.

Katie – How much is the water saving per year with these products?

Marcus – The actual benchmark figure we use is 100,000 litres per urinal per year. There are obviously different scenarios regarding washroom use and so on and so forth so that can differ down and up but it’s a good benchmark and stands true in all our case studies.

Katie – Your products stand out somewhat as well because not only are they economically friendly and environmentally friendly but they also have an integrated HD screen so the clubs or venues can keep the fan engagement going literally the whole way, so can you tell us a bit more about that side of it?

Marcus – Yes, that’s interesting because when URIMAT took out the global patent on the product, they were forward thinking about the actual messaging display on the top of the urinal. At the stage when technology was advanced enough to become a high definition digital screen, they were able to take advantage of that, and that’s what’s now called Visutal here in the UK. It’s called URIMAT Connect in other countries. And yes, you can engage at whatever level you want, with whoever, with whatever brand messages, advertising or social messaging you want. it’s a fantastic tool for engagement.

Katie – Finally, you were exhibiting here at the ALSD International event. How has your experience been of this inaugural event?

Marcus – It’s been excellent. You can see that the whole event has been well structured. I know it’s been done previously in the US for many years and that can be seen in the whole of the organisation, and I would say that the quality of the personnel attending is just who we need to speak to and meet with.

Katie – thank you Marcus, We look forward to seeing the new installation at the Spurs stadium and no doubt many more installations to come.