Flying “pumpkins” fight fires

By Jamie Swedberg

BWI Enterprises Ltd. in Calgary, Alberta, is manufacturing a product that has lifting straps like a bulk bag, but is designed to be picked up by a helicopter, not a forklift. “It’s for firefighting,” says president Brian Cook. “The helicopter picks the bag up, dips it in where there’s a water source, and takes the water where it can be used to fight fires. The other application for our helicopter bag is to move around seismic and geophysical equipment such as batteries and cables.”

The PVC bags are rounder than typical FIBCs, resembling big orange pumpkins, but the core concept is the same: lift at the top, discharge at the bottom. This sort of problem-solving-by-analogy may be the future of the North American bulk bag market: perceiving customer needs, then altering existing FIBC technology to serve those needs.

Jamie Swedberg is a freelance writer based near Athens, Ga.