What we do - Chem International

The invisible layer

The built environment runs on chemistry nobody is supposed to notice.

Notice is what happens when it stops. The ice sheet that won’t hold an edge. The dishroom that fails a swab. The boiler that scales up in February. The lagoon that turns the wrong colour in June. Behind every place that quietly works there is a product, a ratio and a schedule.

Chem International formulates and distributes around 200 specialty chemical products from Edmonton, Alberta — cleaners, sanitizers and disinfectants; descalers and degreasers; floor finishes and strippers; boiler and cooling-water treatments; lagoon and lift-station biology; hand soap and heavy-duty hand cleaner. Every one of them exists to keep one specific system doing its job.

We are not a general-line distributor with a chemical aisle. Since 1988, specialty chemistry for institutions, municipalities and industry has been the whole business — formulated, blended and shipped under an ISO 9001:2015 quality system, with COR safety certification and TDG compliance behind every load that leaves the dock.

Formulated, not just resoldMost of what we sell, we make. When a product needs to behave differently in hard prairie water or a cold-climate lagoon, the people who can change it are down the hall, not in another time zone.

Built for the system, not the aisleA floor finish, a warewash detergent and an oxygen scavenger have nothing in common except the building they keep open. We organize chemistry by the system it serves, so the operator sees the whole program and not a shelf.

Documented before it shipsEvery product carries a Safety Data Sheet and a Technical Data Sheet. Programs carry wall charts, control windows and shift checks. Nothing leaves without the paper that lets someone else run it tomorrow.

A community, in sectionSix systems · one horizon · the ruler runs along the ground

Arena & rec centreIce, glass, dressing rooms and a concession. Cleaners that don’t haze the boards, sanitizer where the skates come off, a floor program that survives slush and blades.

SchoolEight hundred pairs of boots and one custodial team. A finish that holds a shine through winter, washroom disinfection that satisfies the inspector, soap in every dispenser on the first day.

Kitchen & dishroomWarewash detergent, rinse aid and sanitizer dosed to the machine and the water, not to habit. Delime on hardness. A swab that passes.

Boiler & water plantOxygen scavenging, scale and corrosion control, condensate treatment. A boiler that reaches spring without a tube pull, and control windows written where the operator reads them.

Lift stationGrease broken down before it reaches the wet well. Odour that stops at the property line. Fewer call-outs at two in the morning.

LagoonCold-water and warm-water biology matched to the season. Sludge reduced in place instead of dredged. An effluent that meets the licence.

The operator

The building doesn’t know it’s clean. The operator does.

Somewhere in every community there is a person who knows which drain backs up first, what the boiler sounds like when the feedwater is off, and how the lagoon smells the week before it turns. They are rarely thanked and never in the brochure. This page is, in part, for them.

The arena operator flooding the sheet at five in the morning.

The certified water operator who is also the public works foreman, the grader driver and the person on call this weekend.

The custodian carrying a school through a winter of boots with one floor machine and a schedule that has no slack in it.

The kitchen lead sanitizing four hundred covers before the lunch bell.

The wastewater operator who reads a lagoon cell by eye a week before the lab result confirms it.

Keeping the world turning is a job with a name on the shift log. We treat it that way.

What respect looks like from a supplier

We write for the person at the pumpDilution ratios, control windows and shift checks go on a wall chart in plain language, at the point of use — not buried on page four of a data sheet.

We answer the phone with a technicianThe people who formulate the products in Edmonton are the same people who pick up when a reading is drifting.

We don’t sell strength as a strategyIf the problem is dwell time, temperature or water hardness, we say so before anything is dosed harder or swapped out.

The setting survives turnoverA program that lives in one supervisor’s head resets the day that person moves on. Ours is written down, posted where the work happens and re-verified on the next visit.

Paperwork arrives with the productSDS, TDS and wall charts ship with the order — not after the inspector asks for them.

Four promises

Dedicated to keeping the world clean, safe, functional and efficient.

One community at a time. Four words, each with a job attached — and a way to tell whether it got done.

Clean

Soil removed, not moved around. Surfaces that pass the inspector and the parent. A floor that still looks like something in March.

What we bringCleaners, sanitizers and floor programs matched to the surface, the soil and the water they will actually be mixed with.

Safe

Sanitizer at a verified concentration. Disinfectant with a registration number and a contact time someone can actually hold. Handling instructions written for the person handling it.

What we bringRegistered products, a complete SDS and TDS on every item, TDG-compliant shipping and a COR-certified safety system.

Functional

Boilers that make steam. Lagoons that meet their licence. Dish machines that pass the swab. Systems doing the one thing they were built to do, on the day they are needed.

What we bringTreatment programs for boilers, cooling water, lagoons and lift stations, with control windows written down and checked.

Efficient

The right amount, not the most. Dilution that is measured, cost in use calculated on your delivered price, and a schedule that doesn’t spend the operator’s shift on our product.

What we bringDilution control, program commissioning and cost-in-use benches, so the setting stays where it was left.

One community at a time

Most of what we ship goes to places you would drive through in a minute.

Towns, villages, counties and municipal districts. School divisions and colleges. Arenas, pools and rec centres. Hospitals, seniors’ lodges and care homes. First Nations. Water and wastewater utilities. And the food plants, shops and fleets that keep those communities employed. More than 3,000 of them, across British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Public-sector purchasing is not something we work around. It is how we have done business since 1988: tenders and standing offers, group purchasing, delivery windows that respect a two-person public works crew, and invoicing a municipal office can process without a phone call.

A small community does not get a smaller standard. The same ISO 9001:2015 quality system, the same technician on the phone, the same wall chart on the plant wall — whether the population is four hundred or four hundred thousand.

Awarded supplierChem International is an awarded supplier under Kinetic GPO RFSO 25-06, Water Treatment Chemicals, Supplies and Services — a cooperative purchasing route for eligible public-sector organizations.

1988Founded in Edmonton, Alberta

3,000+Institutional, municipal and industrial clients

BC · AB · SKService area

ISO 9001:2015Quality system · COR · TDG

What we make

Around 200 products, organized by the system they keep running.

Six product families and the hand cleaners that go with all of them. Each family is a program, not a shelf: the products are chosen to work together on one kind of system, in one kind of water, for one kind of operator.

Commercial SanitationCleaners, disinfectants, sanitizers and washroom care for institutions that get inspected: schools, care homes, health facilities, rec centres and offices.See the family Facility MaintenanceFloor finishes and strippers, carpet care, degreasers and specialty maintenance chemistry for buildings that see a real winter.See the family Food ServiceWarewash detergents, rinse aids and sanitizers dosed to the machine, plus kitchen and food-contact-surface programs for commercial and institutional kitchens.See the family Industrial RemediationDegreasers, descalers, solvent replacements and shop chemistry for fleets, plants, shops and public works yards.See the family Municipal WastewaterLagoon biology, lift-station grease control, odour and sludge programs for communities that operate their own system.See the family Water TreatmentBoiler, cooling and closed-loop treatment: scale, corrosion and oxygen control with control windows written down.See the family Hand CleanersHand soap, sanitizer and heavy-duty hand cleaner for the people doing all of the above — because the last surface in every program is a pair of hands.See the family

How we work

Three ways in, depending on how you think about your site.

Some people think in buildings. Some think in jobs. Some just want the system looked after. Each door leads to the same chemistry and the same technicians.

By facilityCI FacilitySpec^™Start from the building — an arena, a school, a care home, a food plant — and get the full program that kind of facility needs, room by room, with the products already chosen to work together.Open FacilitySpec By processCI360^™Start from the job — a wash bay, a dishroom, a lagoon, a corridor — broken into the stages an operator actually works through, one product per stage, and a bench to prove the setting is still where it was left.Open CI360 By serviceCI SupportLab^™The service layer: LagoonGuard, BoilerGuard, FacilityGuard and Kinetic GPO support. Site programs, commissioning packets, seasonal changeovers and follow-up visits from the technicians in Edmonton.Open SupportLab

Specialty chemicals make the world go round.Operators keep it turning. We build the chemistry they turn it with.