07 November 2003
	SIDELINES No more softly softly By By Sasha Planting

The makers of a new pool cleaning product are paddling hard to compete with entrenched chlorine products that dominate the market. BonPure, which makes O2h!, is taking on the heavyweight chemical suppliers with a feisty media campaign and a move from pool specialists to the shelves of general retailers. O2h! is an ecologically friendly purification product that sanitises and conditions water without creating harmful by-products, to the extent that people can drink it. Since its launch in SA last year, the product has gained 5%-7% of chlorine market share. It was developed eight years ago by an SA inventor, whose twin daughters were allergic to chlorinated swimming pools. He discovered a way of using peroxygen - a safe, oxygen-based bleach used in washing powders and the chlorine-free bleaching of paper - to do the job done by chlorine and other chemicals. After patenting the product globally, the US rights were sold to a US pool company six years ago. Then in 2001 SA entrepreneur Joanne Raphael-Katz bought the global rights to the patent (outside the US) and explored how the product could be applied in other industries. In 2002 she hired water treatment expert and biochemist Steven Lea, who developed the formulation further. Now interest in the product set is growing. "In Europe we would retail for around a third of the price of chlorine-based competitors," says Raphael-Katz. "And big distributors are keen on this product." During the World Summit on Sustainable Development, BonPure managed the impossible - it cleaned up Johannesburg's Bruma Lake so well you could see the bottom. Not that you'd want to.