Business View Magazine | July 2019

51 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE JULY 2019 “bread and butter,” according to Chief Development Officer, Joey Thomas, Phoenix has been penetrating the composite tank market, especially since acquiring the Elevated Tank Division of Pittsburg Tank & Tower in 2006, along with its 52,000-sq.-ft. plant manufacturing plant and a work force skilled in composite elevated tank manufacturing and management. “If you imagine a tank that is all steel construction, you’re going to have lot more surface area to recoat over the life of the structure,” Thomas explains. “So, with a composite tank, all the support structure is concrete and the steel tank, the water-bearing container, is sitting atop that. With all steel tanks, it can be costly to maintain the product over the life of the product, and while, on the front end, composites cost more, you could see the value, long-term, of it being less costly to provide maintenance to the structure, and a lot of people are taking more note of that. That is a market that we have been trying very hard to get into to be qualified on more bidding opportunities. So, that’s certainly a big step forward and we’re PHOENI X FABR I CATORS & ERECTORS continuing to grow and have a stronger foothold within the composite market.” Company Vice President, Kurt Fuller, agrees. “I believe we’ve seen an uptick in the volume of bidding opportunities, and I would say that we have achieved the first milestone of our goal of breaking into the large capacity, composite, elevated tank market,” he notes. “In general, since January 2019, the market seems to be trending in the direction of elevated tanks of all capacities, and, in the last two months, the bidding opportunities we have seen for that style of tank are, probably, the most I’ve ever seen in any 30 or 60-day stretch. I think a lot of it is that the aesthetics are usually touted as better, and there are lifecycle costs in the large capacities, that, if presented right, could make an appealing alternative.” As Phoenix continues to expand its capabilities, there are also challenges to confront. One of them is the volatility in steel prices due to the shifting nature of the tariff war between China and the U.S. Fuller explains: “We have two types of steel.