Pest Management Professional, September 2013

ADVERTORIAL SUSPEND ING PEST PROBLEMS When bugs invade a manufacturers clean room Griffin Pest Solutions finds an answer that provides long term control No business wants pests but there are few customers where they have as detrimental an impact as those who deal with food or pharmaceuticals Josh Gieszer a service supervisor with Kalamazoo Michigan based Griffin Pest Solutions had a large regulated commercial account that had just started producing products for the food and pharmaceutical industries That company tried to create several clean room environments in an old structure that had neither been built nor designed for that purpose Three of the main clean rooms walls faced the exterior of the building and they all had gaps cracks and crevices open to the outside The facility is located in the middle of a rural area with heavy pest populations At night it is the only nearby light source attracting all of the areas flying insect pests In the spring staff started noticing ant swarmers and small aquatic insect pest activity inside the clean room Gieszer recalls That could have potentially caused a plant shutdown The company realized then it should have followed Griffins recommendations to seal the walls Until that was done Griffin had to treat the growing problem We are very limited with respect to products and practices inside the facility and nothing can be used inside the clean room Gieszer says We had a very cost conscious owner who simply wanted us to make the problem go away as inexpensively as possible Gieszer and his team selected Suspend PolyZone from Bayer We were told that we could only apply products outside but that we could use any product that we felt would stop the infiltration of outside insects long enough for them to have maintenance seal up the walls Gieszer says Our experience with this client led us to believe that that actual maintenance work may not be completed for quite some time Gieszer was concerned that Griffin might not get approval for another application easily because the food plant wouldnt want to pay for another application We selected Suspend PolyZone because our experience showed the product had very good results and superior residual activity Gieszer says The application worked as expected stemming the pest pressure But when the pests went away so did the clients urgent need to seal the cracks and crevices in the walls Despite Griffin Pest Solutions warning about remedying the situation nothing was done and the pests came back The client was so pleased with the results of the application however that additional applications were approved until the repair work was eventually done several months later Kelly Keast a service technician with Griffin Pest Solutions sprays Suspend PolyZone around the building of one of the companys commercial clients Each year Griffin Pest Solutions reevaluates its product tool kit Management polls supervisors to get their thoughts on how each solution fared We like to select a primary perimeter product and purchase for a full season for all branch locations to capitalize on program or volume discount opportunities says Jeff Spencer A C E vice president of Griffin PolyZone was a new product for us last year so I reached out to our supervisors and technicians to see whether they had been pleased with its performance or if we should look at a different product for this year All responses and feedback were very positive in favor of sticking with Suspend Polyzone Its a versatile product with a long residual that simply works well with our quarterly services www mypmp net Pest Management Professional September 2013 73