Making a Quick Shift From Fracking Fluids to Covid-19 Cleanup

Advanced BioCatalytics Corp. is more vulnerable to energy price swings than your average startup-size company in Irvine, Calif. It’s less fashionable, too, long specializing in the creation of protein-based fluids used in oil and gas fracking. But as Southern California began to shut down in March, Carl Podella, the co-founder who oversees its research and development efforts, told Chief Executive Officer Chris Harano he had a very different project in mind: coronavirus cleanup.

Podella wanted to shift the company’s production facilities to make liquid disinfectant instead of fracking fluids. He’d been quietly working on the formulas anyway, so it wouldn’t be a standing start. Advanced BioCatalytics already had a small sideline in anti-grime solvents, and with the right new ingredients, he argued, it could expand beyond the standards of an average cleaning product and meet the government’s standard for disinfectants. Podella, who previously spent 27 years as a chemist at S.C. Johnson & Son Inc., says his experience with cleaning products there left him confident he could adapt quickly.