Words: Helena Morgan

When ICEBLASTER founder Michael Petrovich travelled to rural Victoria to clean flood-damaged properties, he was bewildered by how a flat, expansive and almost peaceful landscape could bear witness to such devastating floods.

“I was approaching this farm and couldn’t see a tree for a mile,” he tells INCLEAN. “It was just a plain flat ground and in the middle of nowhere there’s a house – I was just mind blown that this area was once flooded. We cannot comprehend what these people have gone through.”

This experience of travelling to rural and isolated areas to conduct a sustainable and speciality cleaning service further ignited Petrovich’s admiration for the ongoing obstacles the farming community endures as part of an arduous and isolated life.

“I don’t think people generally appreciate how tough farmers have it and how hard they work,” says Petrovich.

Such an unintended revelation and sense of fulfilment is a perk of Petrovich’s job that he is constantly grateful for. ICEBLASTER’s genesis is owed to Petrovich serendipitously stumbling across dry-ice blasting as a non-abrasive and relatively chemical-free cleaning solution when he was researching treatments for vintage cars.

Serendipitous cleaning solution discovery

A love for vintage cars can be the gateway into many things, but for Petrovich, it sparked a fascination with an area of cleaning he estimates fewer than 10 companies specialise in across Australia. Upon purchasing a 1963 Mercedes Benz just before the COVID-19 lockdowns, he began researching treatment plans for vintage cars.

“I was doing some investigations into how to treat certain parts of the car, undercarriages and the interior and engine,” he says. “While researching, I came across dry-ice blasting as

a method of cleaning.” There was seemingly only one company in the US that held a patent to conduct dry-ice blasting in the method ICEBLASTER now practises.

Petrovich was attracted to the non-toxic, heat-free and dry element of dry ice as a cleaning method, which he denotes as a dream cleaning treatment for cars. “Whenever you work with cars or any metal surfaces, water tends to accumulate in the cavities and eventually that will rust, so having something that is absent of water was really interesting to me,” he says. Dry-ice blasting does not create any additional waste.

Dry-ice cleaning has none of the limitations of sandblasting, another common automotive cleaning method. “When you do things by sandblasting, even though it’s quicker and in many ways perhaps more effective, it actually creates a lot of mess,” says Petrovich.

Sandblasting also requires a hefty amount of heat, which risks metal warping. “The operator can quite easily warp up the skin of a door and, once you warp that, it’s not going back. You basically have to remove it and replace it,” he says.

Alternatively, dry ice has a stable temperature of -79 degrees Celsius, meaning the metal will never warp and every surface of the car can be thoroughly cleaned, from the undercarriage to individual engine components.

A chance job in Melbourne leads to a business

Petrovich realised he wanted to transform his appreciation for dry-ice blasting into a business.

He purchased equipment from a distributor in Queensland, who coincidentally had an upcoming job in Melbourne cleaning food packaging machinery. The distributor asked Petrovich if he would be willing to do the local job to save on travel expenses and just like that, ICEBLASTER had its first gig. He recalls the client being “blown away” by the results.

“You revert the equipment and the surface back to its original state in minutes with dry-ice blasting,” he says. Petrovich describes dry-ice blasting as the “perfect fit” for food packaging machinery due to its efficacy. He explains how efficiency plummets when businesses enlist engineers to clean machines instead of considering an option such as dry-ice blasting. “Engineers are highly skilled and you could utilise them for much better purposes,” he says.

 Three-stage process of non-toxic cleaning 

ICEBLASTER’s dry-ice blasting removes grease, mould, oil, contaminants and coatings from surfaces in commercial kitchens, residential properties, food packaging factories and

dairy production lines, in addition to structures such as die-casting machines and electrical components. It can also lift boat barnacles and graffiti.

Petrovich explains how the three-stage ice blasting process removes the damaged area while retaining the original design and reducing the likelihood of further contamination.

“If you remove grease or grime off the surface, that’s all you’re going to end up with,” says Petrovich. “The dry ice pellets are very small – three millimetres– and they will convert to gas upon impact.”

The clean and dry aspects of the three-stage process rely on gas evaporating. “One stage is basically kinetic energy, the other is thermal shock and finally sublimation,” he says. “Mini explosions occur underneath the surface, turn into gas and evaporate and all you end up with is whatever you’ve taken off on the ground.”

Proud to offer rural and regional services

Despite initially discovering the usefulness of ice blasting for automotive cleaning, Petrovich was eager for his company to avoid the moniker of a “car detailer” and instead specialise in the aforementioned sectors of automotive services, hospitality services and fire and flood damage restoration.

Petrovich fell into the latter sector after one of the biggest building companies approached him to assist in flood and fire damage cleaning in regional and rural areas, which encouraged him to offer a mobile service to increase range and accessibility. He often spends three to four days in rural areas attending to fire and flood damage in the hope of offering peace of mind to people whose properties have been devastated by natural disasters. “I clean timber frames and also hardwood flooring if needed,” says Petrovich. “You can salvage a lot by doing this.”

Waste comes in many forms

Having founded ICEBLASTER just before the COVID-19 lockdowns, Petrovich is excited by the company’s trajectory, yet admits that it is an ongoing learning experience.

“It’s a business that is still relatively young, so there are fluctuations in that respect, but persistence is key,” he says. “You have to be consistent in service delivery levels and standards and be able to persevere when things get tough.”

He was also inspired to incorporate processes of the business management model Six Sigma into ICEBLASTER’s operation. A core tenet of Six Sigma is essentially slashing any step that does not contribute to the intended end result.

Petrovich says Six Sigma resonates with ICEBLASTER’s desire for factories and facilities to be able to clean their equipment while remaining in operation.

“Imagine if you had to switch the production off just to wait for something to cool down in order for you to clean it,” he says. “This is where Six Sigma comes in and this is where ICEBLASTER comes in – I will clean your production line while you are running it.”

Paying it forward after unpredictable accidents

Petrovich operates ICEBLASTER with humility and gratitude and is comforted by the future-proof and climate-responsive aspect of ice blasting.

He is inspired by the people he comes across in rural areas reeling from natural disasters wreaking havoc on their livelihoods. Petrovich reiterates his appreciation for the farming

community – those who cop the brunt of the fallout from natural disasters socially and economically. “I know it sounds corny, but if I can repay people somehow by helping them reinstate their property in a very quick turnover time, that means a lot to me,” he says.

His work has exposed him to the instability of rural life. Petrovich provided an ice blasting service to a builder who had nine years of work building a hardwood house thrown away due to a freak accident. “A TV caught fire while being switched off and melted, fell off the wall, onto the bed and the whole house caught fire,” says Petrovich.

He confirms how accidents can happen to “anybody at any given time” and feels privileged to play a part in helping people repair and recuperate through cleaning.

Ubiquity and usefulness of dry ice

People are curious and fascinated by the properties of dry-ice cleaning and Petrovich is always happy to explain the process and illustrate the safety and sustainability benefits.

“Dry ice contains carbon dioxide, which is extracted from the air, so it’s a natural gas,” says Petrovich.

He says dry ice is instrumental in many daily processes. “We don’t realise that we wouldn’t be able to enjoy our everyday things if it wasn’t for dry ice – dry ice is often used when transporting food,” says Petrovich.

The process calls for simple personal protective equipment (PPE) requirements such as a mask and ventilation. Petrovich says one limitation is the excessive noise associated with the process, yet ear muffs and Bluetooth-enabled headphones generally remedy this hurdle.

“Compressed air has to be generated somehow, and that’s used by a diesel-powered compressor, and obviously they produce emissions, smoke or fumes,” he says. “It’s not extreme in any sense, but it is like a smaller truck humming in the background, so there’s nothing out there unfortunately that’s a hundred percent emission-free.”

Petrovich says the minimal emissions are small sacrifices to be made for a wholly reliable, efficient and sustainable service. He comments on the slow uptake of dry-ice blasting in Australia in comparison to the US; however social media assists in increasing the popularity and appeal of dry-ice blasting.

Client satisfaction is the biggest win

Petrovich still gets excited about witnessing the end result of dry-ice blasting and credits this feeling as one of the main motivators for continuing in this role he almost accidentally entered into. “I go to a job and I’m excited about it because I know the end result is going to be amazing,” he says.

“What drives me is the fact that I feel like I’ve done a really great job and often this is purely based on the customer’s reaction.” Petrovich cites another example of a couple being

able to move back into a property only days after an accident due to the effectiveness of dry-ice blasting. “The results are instantaneous – I basically cleaned the entire house and within two and a half days they were able to move back in,” he says.

The collective embrace to live, work, build and now clean sustainably is comforting to Petrovich, yet he hopes such pursuits towards environmentally mindful solutions are not fads and instead are here to stay. 

This article first appeared in the May/June print edition of INCLEAN Magazine.