A Carmi, Illinois marine company is making a big splash around the world.
Products made by Elastec American Marine were heavily involved in helping clean-up last year's massive BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Now, Elastec has just delivered a pair of breakthrough oil skimming boats to its biggest customer.
Elastec has been making oil spill clean-up equipment for over 20-years and now has 140-employees.
While the White County company is hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean, they're getting global attention from oily sea to shining sea.
Their controlled oil burning equipment, skimmers and hundreds of miles of containment boom helped to limit the disaster.
Nowadays the company is showcasing a pair of new custom made pontoon boats setting sail for China, that Elastec is proud to say can multi-task.
"So they can use these boats daily for just keeping the areas around their harbors clean, and then when there's an oil spill they have a vessel that can fight the oil spill," Elastec CEO Donnie Wilson said.
Clogged skimmers and pumps had been a big problem, but a powerful scoop on these boats screens trash before oil is recovered.
This new design should help make oil clean-ups quicker and easier, limit damage to the environment and have an economic ripple effect in southern Illinois.
"We're one of the largest employers in Carmi, with two facilities here, and we have 30 employees in Fairfield now, and that number is growing," Wilson told 14 News. "So I think we bring quite a few jobs to the area."
Elastec has 40 agents selling in 100 countries, including Norway, Brazil, Nigeria and Vietnam.
They even have an office in Beijing, China, which is now their biggest market.
Elastec has also just announced they're one of 10 teams from around the world selected to be part of the 2011 Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X CHALLENGE.
It's a $1.4 million competition designed to inspire a new generation of innovative solutions to speed the pace of cleaning up oil spills.
To learn more about this competition, please visit www.iprizecleanoceans.org.
Copyright 2011 WFIE. All rights reserved.
