Company Profile

The Trident Products & Services, LLC, began as a joint venture of TO Enterprises, owned by Tom Nutt, and Associated Chemicals & Technology, Inc, owned by Bob Zemp. TO Enterprises is involved in Oil & Gas and Agriculture and Associated Chemicals is involved in proprietary products and designs for industrial and municipal wastewater operations, some involving biological organisms.

The route to enhancing plant growth was not a direct one. It began in the late 1980’s by developing a biological method to reduce paraffin deposits in the earth’s fissures which were restricting the flow of oil and gas to well heads. The methodology developed involved a mixture of bacteria, surfactants and nutrients. This three pronged approach resulted in the name “Trident”, after the three pronged spear of Poseidon.

During research for that project, various organisms were encountered which reportedly had a beneficial impact on plants. This led us to commit Trident to pursuing a natural approach for: "A better way to grow plants with reduced pollution from fertilizers and pesticides."

That commitment was followed by years of research, sorting through thousands of organisms, to identify those bacteria which:

• enhance plant growth,
• stimulate root growth,
• scavenge nutrients, whether manmade or naturally present, and
• deliver nutrients to plants; possibly increasing the effectiveness of nutrient delivery by acting as vector delivery agents.

Early on, very little information was available in the United States. Much of our early work benefited from work being done in Canada and Europe. The Europeans had begun a program with seventeen universities in the late 1980’s called IMPACT for "Interactions between Microbial inoculants and resident Populations in the rhizosphere of Agronomically important Crops in Typical soils."

All organisms which we use are naturally occurring and were harvested in North America. They are prolific and readily available in natural, undisturbed, rich, fertile lands but not sustainable in lands devoid of complex, numerous varieties of plants and animals. As man removes the decay and complex variety of plants and animals in his growing environment, he also removes the conditions critical for Nature to maintain the complex bio-flora she uses to recycle plants and animals into the nutrients and minerals that the next generations of plants require to thrive. We temporarily put some of the most important ones back in the soil, in the correct numbers. There they assist the plants and help Nature to thrive once more with less pollution.

Our early organisms were grown in primitive and austere conditions using drums, fish tank bubblers, and heat lamps in a barn in Catlett, Virginia. By 1995 we were preparing for field tests with commercial crops of corn and soybeans. We realized that we did not have the quality control that would assure that no pathogens contaminated our fermentation processes. We approached a company involved in fermentation of organisms for wastewater and other commercial applications to see if they could prepare our mixtures for us. They did not have any products that were available for plants but had just hired a microbiologist and a small team to pursue that examination. We were welcomed with open arms. As we contacted them they had not even had phones installed on their desks. We were already years down the road and they agreed to collaborate on the development and testing of our products. That collaboration continues to this day even though they have been bought and sold several times.

In 1996 we brought in a third member to the company who has a factory, warehouse, packaging and shipping operations in North Carolina.