'Iceman' Lands $100 Million Deal With EasyJet

They call him "The Iceman."

From his company headquarters at Manchester-Boston Regional Airport, Salvatore Calvino has built a multimillion-dollar business servicing aircraft on runways across the nation. On Monday, he'll take off for London to sign a contract that will extend his company's reach into airports across Europe.

In a deal worth an estimated $100 million over the next 10 years, Integrated Deicing Services (IDS) will deice jets at airports in several European cities for EasyJet, described as "the Southwest of Europe" by Calvino, president and CEO of Integrated Deicing Services.

IDS has made Inc. magazine's list of the fastest-growing companies in country for the past three years in a row. With revenue of about $14 million in 2007, the company reported sales of $38 million in 2011 and is on track to make $85 million in 2012, thanks in part to the European expansion, according to Calvino.

An East Boston native, Calvino grew up around airplanes. His father worked for an aviation service company at Logan, and by high school, he was working the runways -- fueling, loading, unloading and cleaning aircraft used for cargo delivery.

"I just fell in love with jets. I never wanted to do anything else," he said.

While working for Signature Flight Support at Logan International Airport, he was recruited to help investors purchase and blend smaller aviation service companies into a larger organization. He could have taken a management position with that company, but instead purchased Manchester Cargo, a small company based at what was then the growing Manchester Regional Airport in 1999.

At the time, there were 40 employees in four locations. Today, IDS and three other associated companies Calvino has started over the years employ 3,000 people at airports in the northern and central parts of the country, where weather conditions create a market for his signature service -- deicing aircraft.

Ironically, IDS doesn't deice jets at the Manchester airport, but the location is ideal for corporate headquarters, says Calvino, who lives in Rye and loves the New Hampshire lifestyle. About 20 employees staff the offices at the old airport terminal on Ammon Drive.

The company's greatest growth started after Calvino purchased Integrated Deicing Services in 2008.

"IDS was built on the latest and greatest technology," Calvino says. "Its founder ran the United Airlines deicing operation for 25 years."

IDS uses a forced air system that shoots a mixture of water and glycol at the snow and ice on jets at a speed of about 700 mph. The traditional method -- pumper trucks hosing down jets with the same mixture -- puts a lot more of the deicing chemicals onto the plane and into the environment. While some services charge by the gallon of fluid used, IDS offers a fixed price per plane.

It isn't the only aviation service using forced air technology, but Calvino says it is the largest, with a fleet of more than 135 trucks.

In a promotional video, EasyJet calls the alliance with IDS "Project 21."

"That name was their idea," Calvino said. "It means we're bringing deicing into the 21st century."

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Dave Solomon may be reached at [email protected].