With all the unpredictability being experienced the last couple years, it’s nice to know there is a mainstay product that companies can count on.
Just as surely as the service sector can weather just about any storm, so can one of the key tools in pool pros’ metaphorical belt — chemicals. Once a pool has been built, it will need care and chemicals, so both provide the recession-proof business that supports companies through the highs and lows.
Here, a handful of members of PHTA’s Recreational Water and Air Quality Committee (RWAQC) discuss a potpourri of topics involving chemicals, including how they believe the category will fare through the talk of tariffs, the state of specialty chemicals, and changes being made to the industry’s water-quality standard.
Topic of the year
With new home sales slowing down a touch, that has had some impact on the chemicals market, but it’s negligible, says Joe Laurino, former chair of PHTA’s Recreational Water and Air Quality Committee, and president/CEO of Periodic Products, based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
“Once the pool is built it has to be maintained,” he says. “So there are very different drivers within [the new pool versus chemical] markets.”
The market is somewhat insulated from the ups and downs of the economy, agrees Terry Arko, of Hasa. It is more impacted by Mother Nature, he says.
“I don’t really think the economy necessarily plays into that as much as the weather,” he says. “People may not swim as much, and chemicals don’t get consumed as quickly when the weather is cooler. But it’s going to get hot at some point, and people are going to need chemicals.”
If anything, some people worry whether chemicals will become more expensive due to tariffs. But these experts see a scenario where it does not become an issue for the chemicals market.
But it’s not cut-and-dry. If significant tariffs are imposed, other factors will determine their impact. Whether or not a specific product is made in the U.S. or a country being charged tariffs will affect the cost to businesses and consumers. But, while many chemical products are manufactured in the United States, some components still may come from other countries. In some cases, domestic suppliers could step in and provide substitutes for components that come from out of the country, thereby reducing or eliminating the impact of tariffs on their costs.
“So it will take a while in terms of supply line shortages developing or [increased prices] for that to be known,” Laurino says. “We’re seeing no impact yet in chemical sales based upon economic factors, or tariffs and costs.”
A lot of this has to do with timing. Manufacturers make their big production push leading to early-buy season in fall, when retailers, service firms and builders stock up for the following spring and summer. So, by the time tariff announcements arrived, most companies had what they need for the year ahead.
The real test will come in fall or next season, Laurino says.
“Because the supply chain will have that delay [before production and early-buy season begin], there’s a lag,” he says. “So we probably won’t know until this fall when price increases start to hit chemicals.
“If tariffs are eliminated in [May or June] and we go back to more normal trade relationships, I don’t think you’re going to see much of an impact.”
Arko says his company is more likely to monitor such factors as energy costs, transportation costs, as well as the availability and costs of packaging materials.
“From the raw ingredient standpoint, we can keep costs down because we have more control over that,” he says. “But if there are any shortages or issues with energy costs, transportation costs, or packaging materials … that can lead to cost problems or challenges.”
For those who dread the idea of reliving the COVID price hikes and chemical-supply shortages, Laurino offers a confident perspective.
“It’s not COVID,” he says. “I don’t think we’re anywhere near COVID. With COVID you not only lost the supply chain, but you lost the labor as well. So when you went to purchase something, there was nobody to make it. So, it’s not going to be the shock that COVID was, and things are going to normalize faster.”
Professionals haven’t been the only ones concerned about the potential impact of tariffs on chemicals.
Craig Sears hasn’t had cause to raise prices on the chemicals that his commercial service firm includes in its maintenance program. He’s fairly optimistic at this point. But he has been fielding questions from some concerned clients.
“We’ve gotten some relatively standard price increases from vendors,” says the president of Sears Pool Management in Sandy Springs, Ga. “We’re proceeding as usual and telling our customers that we’re expecting things to stay steady Eddie, with no major hiccups or supply chain issues. But if a tariff starts to affect things, then we would notify them.”
An upside
But even if shortages were to come, Roy Vore believes that pool professionals are more prepared.
A few years back, in addition to the pressures of the pandemic on the supply chain, the industry took another hit: A manufacturer fire that resulted in a shortages of trichlor products. As a way to adapt, many companies had to pivot to dichlor products. This is something that companies traditionally would avoid, since converting from one to the other requires a process.
But Vore believes the shortage at the turn of this decade caused companies to adapt more quickly, letting go of attachments to their chemical of choice and opening their minds to making a switch, even if only temporarily.
“I think there’s been more of a realization that you could substitute one for the other if you know how to substitute a chlorine source,” says Vore says. “I’ve talked to a number of people who were using trichlor and began to supplement with bleach or cal hypo after the fire,” says Vore, senior consultant with Vore & Associates in Suwanee, Ga., as well as a frequent instructor, and a former technology manager with BioLab.
As a CPO instructor, he hadn’t previously taught how to change from trichlor to dichlor or vice versa. But now he’s started.
“The tendency really would be that somebody would stick with one type of chlorine,” he says. “In the last few years, that conversation about ‘Maybe you could use this instead or that instead’ … I’m hearing more of that.”
Converting from one to the other does require certain steps, though, so professionals still need to learn about that process before changing which form of chlorine a system uses.
Specialties on the rise
According to these professionals, the rise in sales and use for specialty chemicals continues to rise.
Part of that, Laurino says, comes from the use of sanitizing equipment, such as ionization or salt. Some of these methods may bring peripheral issues such as metal staining, creating the need for stain removers. “As we start to increase the complexity of what’s going on in the equipment pad and the water itself, we have to manage the situation,” he says.
Sears specifically sees an increase in use of phosphate removers, enzymes and borates. But, as with so much progress in the industry, these changes have been gradual.
“I know it’s something that, as awareness increases, people see the value in those,” he says. “We’ve had some good experiences with enzymes for some of our high-bather-load pools, but … these are incremental increases.”
Some of these chemicals are intended to optimize the performance of chlorine.
“We are becoming more cognizant of quality and trying to use our chemicals more efficiently so we don’t end up with things like disinfection byproducts,” says Jody O’Grady, chair of PHTA’s RWAQC and director of commercial sales for API in Jupiter, Fla.
In Southern California, following the historic wildfires that hit the Los Angeles area in January, certain specialty chemicals are increasing in sales there.
“For the LA fire areas, it’s going to be … a lot of enzymes, clarifier and phosphate remover sales,” Arko says.
Work in progress
PHTA has made a change to its water quality standard that it expects will help the industry stay abreast of the latest developments.
Going forward, the PHTA-11 Standard for Water Quality in Public Pools and Spas has gone into continuous maintenance. Where before, the standard writing committee would update the language every five years, it can now be altered at any time. This means that change requests are continuously accepted, rather than only during a specified window in the updating cycle.
To help foster the change, PHTA has formed a dedicated committee for PHTA-11, where the standard previously was written and updated by the RWAQC.
“We know things are changing, so we can’t wait every five years to update the standard,” O’Grady says.
The RWAQC will continue to write and update PHTA-11’s appendix.
Vore, who heads up the writing committee for PHTA-11, expects that it will be updated annually. This is the first PHTA standard to go under continuous improvement, so the committee is adjusting to the pace.
“We’re working through a pile of change requests now,” says Vore, who expects some changes to be announced in summer or fall.
