Water Treatment and Conservation Business Growing at Double Digits in India

As India’s cities run out of running out of the water, water-intensive industries like manufacturing and hospitality are investing not only in better effluent treatment but reducing overall consumption.

Hyatt, which had to invest on improving the quality of treated sewage treatment plant water to maintain heating and cooling of its property when local body cut water supply or a steel plant that enough water amounting to the combined annual drinking needs of Kolkata and Pune.

The water solutions industry in India is estimated to be worth $1 billion including annuity.

In 2016, Hyatt hotel in Pune, with more than 200 rooms, faced complicated issues when its water supply was abruptly cut off due to a municipal water shortage. To maintain heating and cooling comfort for its guests and employees in the face of this cut, the hotel used treated sewage treatment plant (STP) water in its cooling towers, which created some technical challenges. US-headquartered Ecolab, which provides water solutions, helped Hyatt overcome those challenges.

As industries have realised the need to conserve and treat water for continuity of their business, the business of water and industrial water treatment is growing at double the rate of growth of industrial GDP.

“Ecolab has expanded its manufacturing plant at Pune by 50% in the previous year while seeking a licence to expand its Kolkata manufacturing plant by 100% next year. Future hiring will be 15% add-on in the coming year, to the current capacity which is 600 employees,” said Mukund Vasudevan, managing director and country head of India for Ecolab.

According to a Niti Aayog study, thermal power plants in India account for 87.8% of total industrial water consumption in the country. Power plants are the biggest customers of companies providing water solutions, followed by textiles, pulp and paper and FMCG.

Ecolab claimed that one of India’s largest steelmaker lowered its water consumption by 2.3 billion gallons—equal to one year of drinking water for more than 7.9 million people, more than the combined populations of the cities of Kolkata and Pune without counting the suburbs, as a result of a six-year effort.

Shishir Joshipura, MD and CEO, Praj Industries, which also manufactures equipment for wastewater treatment, said: “The industrial wastewater sector is expected to see strong double-digit growth in coming years, possibly in the range of 10-12% per annum.”

Categorising the consumers of the water treatment business into three categories, Vasudevan said, “Large MNCs, both Indian and international, are well aware that the water they use has to be treated not just for sustainability but for continuity of their business. They are showing a hockey stick increase in water treatment. The mid-sized companies do not have a big sustainability drive, but can be convinced about the payoffs of saving water.”

However, the biggest challenge said Vasudevan, are the SMEs, which account for 50% of the manufacturing activity in the country. “Reaching them is tough, which can be resolved if industry associations take initiatives.”

CEO Water Alliance (CEWA) is a group of companies where CEOs are thinking about water. Its objective is to pool the CSR efforts of these companies to reduce their water consumption by 30% in the next five years.

Praj’s Joshipura said if there is a regulatory call to adhere to stricter norms, it could boost growth in the sector like tightening of Central Pollution Control Board norms or enacting the NationalWater Framework Bill, which is being discussed for the past few years.”

Source: The Economic Times

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