Find out how the accounting and professional services firm helps clients navigate difficult processes and grow.
Ever since its founding in 1990, Belgium-based Desotec has been on a mission to save the environment. Its founders developed a mobile filtration system that helps other businesses reduce their carbon footprints by filtering emissions from water and air, while also purifying portions of a business’s manufacturing or production process.
With an entrepreneurial spirit, the team set its sights across the Atlantic in 2023.But expanding into a new country can be a difficult process to navigate.
Ever since its founding in 1990, Belgium-based Desotec has been on a mission to save the environment. Its founders developed a mobile filtration system that helps other businesses reduce their carbon footprints by filtering emissions from water and air, while also purifying portions of a business’s manufacturing or production process.
With an entrepreneurial spirit, the team set its sights across the Atlantic in 2023.But expanding into a new country can be a difficult process to navigate.
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00:00On this episode of Entrepreneur Stories, we're stopping by Desotek in Darlington, Pennsylvania.
00:05They're an international company whose goal was expansion to the U.S.
00:09But this growth came with challenges.
00:11Luckily, with help from CLA, they got the tax and consulting services they needed to succeed.
00:25Our mission is very simple.
00:27It's helping protect the environment.
00:29And that might sound a bit corny, but helping to protect it for future generations.
00:34What we do is we basically provide circular filtration solutions.
00:38And it helps businesses clean their water, clean their air, get rid of any contamination which they have in their processes.
00:45It's to help business operate sustainably and future-proof their operations.
00:49So we provide activated carbon mobile filtration solutions.
00:54And our filters are used for cleaning an emission source.
00:59It could be either air or water.
01:01Or in some cases, it's purifying a part of their manufacturing or production process.
01:06We've really engineered the filters to be mobile.
01:11And so they work in conjunction with our trailers as well as our systems to exchange the carbon at our location as well as fill them.
01:22One of the things that we're able to do is provide really three differentiating things.
01:27First, because it's a mobile solution and we own the asset, their initial capital expenditure is zero.
01:35And we're able to minimize the overall cost of ownership.
01:38The second thing is because we're mobile, we can minimize the downtime by coming in and exchanging the filter.
01:46It's an exchange process. We can come in and exchange and we're handling the pollution itself.
01:51We bring it back. They don't have to handle it.
01:54And then we're able to recycle that carbon and then reuse it.
02:00And that way it's a very sustainable process as opposed to taking that pollution and putting it in a landfill or some other way of disposal.
02:10To me, preserve the planet and the environment, basically it's what gets us up in the morning.
02:15The energy which we get out of our business is knowing that the offer which we made, the shipment which we posted, the truck that went out,
02:22all of it somewhere took out something which shouldn't be in the environment, cleaned it up, purified it, and makes that day so much better.
02:30It's really a big drive for us.
02:33My name is Matt. I'm the CEO for Destek US.
02:37I've been with the company for 12 years now. Employee number 30, if I'm not mistaken.
02:41We're 450 now, so it's been a cool journey which, long story short, put our European business into the U.S. in June of last year when we took on our North American excursion.
02:54I'm CEO of that division.
02:59We are originally a Belgium-found company.
03:02Belgium is a very small piece of land in between France, Germany, and the Netherlands.
03:07And it's filled with entrepreneurs, just like the founders of Destek, just like our management, and basically everyone who we call Generation D are our employees.
03:16And that entrepreneurial team spirit, that mindset, pushed us across the Atlantic.
03:21There's three core values to everything which we do. It's teamwork, devotion, and excellence.
03:27Teamwork is really big in a growth organization.
03:30That teamwork and devotion are two crucially inter-aligned elements.
03:34And the last one, excellence.
03:36It has a dual meaning to it.
03:38Like excellence, we want to do the thing which is right, and we want to do the things in the right way.
03:45We had the acquisition that was going for us, three locations across different U.S. states, about 100 employees.
03:51We took over an existing business, but we're building.
03:53We're hiring fast. We're acquiring new customers.
03:56We're investing a lot of capital into the organization.
04:00And we're lucky to have someone like CLA to support us in that acceleration.
04:05CLA is the eighth largest professional services firm, with more than 130 locations in the United States.
04:11And we are part of the CLA Global Network.
04:14CLA is a one-stop shop for businesses looking to enter the United States.
04:18The consequences of not doing things correct from the beginning can be quite large.
04:22Whether it's penalties, fines, even just lost business revenue because you didn't have the right insurance policies in place or anything like that.
04:29So it means a lot to be able to support them.
04:31And as we see our clients grow and Adesso Tech grow, it's just amazing.
04:41I think it's really a part of our DNA at Adesso Tech is this mission that we're really providing sustainable solutions.
04:48And helping our customers comply with regulations, minimize their carbon footprint, and minimize their emissions into air or water.
04:57So we feel like that's a very noble mission and one that the whole company believes in.
05:03We've done something that actually makes the world better.
05:06It is something which does drive yourself as an individual.
05:08It just makes you happy knowing that you did your part.
05:17Adesso Tech