Highlights Breadth and Scope of Expertise

At the 22nd Annual Global Demilitarisation Symposium and Exhibition, hosted in Seattle by the US Department of Defense (DoD), EXPAL USA announced that it has passed the 2,900t benchmark in terms of munitions demilitarized for the US Army since signing a commercial agreement in 2016.

The company’s global demilitarization solutions support national efforts to demilitarize, recycle or reuse stockpiles of excess or obsolete munitions, following the most stringent safety and environmental standards. During the four-day symposium, EXPAL highlighted three specific projects in which it has engaged over the last three years:

• An industrialised demilitarization solution for DoD. The company addressed the most demanding safety and environmental standards, investing significantly in its Texarkana facility, including the establishment of a gas treatment centre and remote control operations;

• Mobile solutions for transformation of unstable propellants. When exposing propellants to transport can present problems, the company’s engineering team has developed mobile facilities that empower propellant demilitarization in situ. This includes a gas treatment plant specifically to handle combustion gases: over 2,000t of unstable propellant charges were disposed of during the project;

• Demilitarisation of submarine munitions and explosives. Faced with the requirement to locate, identify, extract and demilitarize munitions dumped at sea, EXPAL conducted a topographic study to locate relevant deposits and designed and built a mobile demilitarization solution, incorporating protected operational areas, in only four months. Over the course of 11 months of operations, over 8,000 munitions and components were successfully demilitarised.

EXPAL USA CEO, Steve Dart, emphasised to the conference that over 25% of the company’s staff are US military veterans, contributing positively to programme success. EXPAL has played a decisive role in developing projects under the 1997 Ottawa Treaty prohibiting the use of anti-personnel mines and the 2008 Dublin Treaty doing the same for cluster bombs.