McElwaine announces £250,000 investment to develop new units

The unit will produce Optizan, a disinfectant and antiseptic based on hypochlorous acid which is made naturally by the white blood cells in mammals and used for healing and protection. It kills bacteria, spores and viruses.

Company Managing Director, Neville McElwaine is very excited about the development.

“Providing households with an ecologically sound alternative to toxic disinfectants is a motivation in itself but we have identified a large number of other markets,” he said.

“Safe food, agriculture, horticulture and cleaning industries are currently using products that have become financially and environmentally expensive when compared with Optizan.”

He also says that, during the Covid-19 pandemic, many businesses and ordinary households world-wide have started to ask crucial new questions about disinfection.

He continued: “Many are questioning accepted standards and asking how disinfection technologies can move closer to nature.

“Optizan is responding to those questions with evidence-based science. Some products are based on solutions that stick to surfaces, but experts believe that many of these solutions can be toxic or carcinogenic. When killing viruses, we cannot be blind to the consequences to our own health. We are not the enemy.”

Importantly, Optizan is pH neutral, comparable to the human body.

Chemicals that are very alkaline or acidic can cause irritation or worse, while the hypochlorous acid in Optizan is the basis of the human body’s defence to infection.

“Our white blood cells produce hypochlorous acid at the site of infection in the body. The symbiosis of Optizan with the human body is what differentiates it from other disinfectants. This is why it is safe for food preparation areas,” explained Mr McElwaine.

Active for over five years in the broader hygiene market, McElwaine Technical has fused technology, engineering and science to propel conventional ways of disinfection into the 21st Century.

“Improving human health and the wider environment by reducing the use of toxic disinfectants and cleaning fluids is mission critical,” he added.

“Water and Fermanagh go hand in hand. We are proud to be based here and to show how the alchemy created by salt, water, and electricity gives a human-proofed dimension to disinfection.

“There should be no fine line between eradicating viruses and protecting human health.

“Our long-term health should not be secondary to the short-term priorities of disinfection no matter if that is in a hospital, dental surgery, food preparation plant or at the kitchen table.”

In full production, the company plans to export Optizan throughout Europe and the Middle East where the market for environmentally friendly disinfection is high volume and rapidly expanding.

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