After a record year of votes, Tnemec announced that the Dum-Dum water tank in Bryan, Ohio, was chosen as the People's Choice Award winner of the 2023 Tank of the Year Competition sponsored by Tnemec Company, a leading provider of high-performance coatings. 

In addition to this honor, this tank, with its innovative design, was chosen by Tnemec's team of Tank Enthusiasts as the 2023 Tank of the Year. As the winner of this contest, the tank will appear in the most prominent position in Tnemec's annual Tank of the Year calendar, alongside the other top finalists.

The winning tank was painted with Tnemec’s UV-resistant, long-lasting fluoropolymer finish, Series 700 HydroFlon, which will help the design look great for a longtime time in the Ohio climate. 

“Overall, our team at Tnemec was blown away not only by the number of entries in this year’s Tank of the Year contest but also by all of the innovative and creative designs in this year’s pool of candidate tanks,” says Brian Cheshire, director of the Water Tank Market. “The tanks in this year’s contest highlighted the hometown pride and overall ingenuity from many towns all across the United States and Canada.”

This year’s winning tank is located on the Spangler Candy Company factory campus. The water in the tower is the same water that is used to manufacture about 12 million Dum-Dums every day. Each of the eight 65-foot-tall Dum-Dums represents one of their most popular flavors. The city of Bryan has also created a brightly marked “photo op spot” just across the street from the tower where visitors come to take photos with the tower in the background. 

Other water tanks among the top 12 finalists for 2023 are in Amarillo, Texas; Artesia, New Mexico; Dunedin, Florida; Florence, South Carolina; Hugo, Oklahoma; Lake Worth Beach, Florida; Lexington, South Carolina; Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin; Tell City, Indiana; Volga, South Dakota; and Clinton, Tennessee.

Over 320 water tanks were nominated with a record of over 46,000 online People’s Choice votes cast this year from across the U.S. and Canada. Each year, the Tank of the Year winner is selected by a panel of water tank enthusiasts based on criteria such as artistic value, the significance of the tank to the community, and challenges encountered during the project. The Dum-Dum tank in Bryan was chosen as the overall winner in 2023 due to many of the factors listed above along with the sheer amount of creativity that went into this design, which incorporated all aspects of the structure of the tank.

“Since 2006, Tnemec has been recognizing municipalities for their aesthetic, creative and innovative uses of our high-performance coatings on water storage tank projects,” Cheshire says. “This year’s finalists represent several different types of water tanks in various shapes and sizes, all of them impressive for one reason or another.”

The Tank of the Year will be featured as the month of January in Tnemec’s 2024 water tank calendar. All finalists and nominees will be included in the following months of the calendar.

For more information on Tank of the Year and to request a 2024 Tank of the Year calendar, visit tankoftheyear.com.