CSP is an academic research and teaching institution at the Department of Banking and Finance at the University of Zurich.

This episode is part of my series on Water Finance. Check it out!

What we covered:

The two types of Impact – and what Impact Investing can trigger

How Impact Investing can grow green companies

How Sustainable Finance can make Brown Companies Greener

How Impact Investors can act as activists for change

How the tobacco example reminds us that screening strategies are limited by the barriers to change

How there are always sin stock funds to counterbalance green stock funds – and how those perform unfortunately stupidly well

How impact investing worldwide is still of the same magnitude as subsidies to the Fossil Fuel Sector

How the recent Swiss referendum on CO2 law, ignited by a fossil fuel companies industrial group, proves that there is still a long way to go

How pension funds could leverage their long-term positions in companies to foster an attitude change towards regulation

How diversification across the three mechanisms probably offers the best yield

Creating a special water activist fund, accelerating early water companies’ growth, creating new business models, taking risks… and much more!

… and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨  

Teaser:

Resources:

Send your warm regards to Florian on LinkedIn

Then do the same with Julian on LinkedIn as well

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Antoine Walter on LinkedIn

Infographic: Impact Investing

Full Transcript:

These are computer-generated, so expect some typos

Antoine Walter:

Hi Florian, Hi, Julian. Welcome to the show! So we were discussing just before launching this recording. And I was telling you that when you do something about finance, you expect people to come from Zurich. At least if you’re in Europe! And I was wondering if that’s a coincidence if both of you are sitting in Zurich right now, or if it was on purpose that you came into the center for finance, at least in Switzerland,

Florian Heeb:

I think it’s, it’s both a coincidence and not. I think we didn’t come on purpose to “the city of finance.” But we came both to study environmental science at ETH. Then I would say that the fact that we are still here, that’s no coincidence. We are working at the Center for sustainable finance and private wealth at the university of Zürich. And I think there are many reasons why that is in Zürich, kind of a hotspot of private wealth, development and finance in Europe.

It all started with environmental studies

Antoine Walter:

But so you both came to study environmental topics? Was that your entry point?

Julian Kölbel:

That’s how we got to know each other, yes. 12 years, 15 years ago. I forgot that.

Antoine Walter:

And how, starting with such a pure endeavor of solving the environments, do you come with this weird Idea to turn to finance?

Julian Kölbel

Well, I think it’s, for me it really started with ecology and, you know, you have these concepts of competition in ecology, and I started thinking also that the word itself, ecology and economy, is kind of the study of the house and the management of the house. And, and that all got me thinking, you know, how does this work together? Because we’re somehow part of the planet, everything that humans do.

And then, you know, once you start thinking about things you go further and further. There was a job I had at rep risk which is a data provider where they basically collect all the negative news about companies in terms of the environment and also social issues and make a score out of that.

And I was thinking, well, that could be really powerful in terms of addressing the environmental problems we have, if we just have a system where the financial markets which is this big machine that somehow drives a lot of what happens on the planet takes into consideration environmental information.

And that’s the basic idea that draw me towards looking into sustainable finance. Of course, we’re both not sort of pure finance guys. We do this sustainable finance, and we’re excited about that idea and whether that works,

Zürich’s Center for Sustainable Finance

Antoine Walter:

Is it different finance and sustainable finance is it really two different fields or is it a specialization within finance?

Julian Kölbel

Well, I would say it’s you know, it’s blending. It’s often that fields, that have nothing to do with each other at some point start to overlap. And yes, I think it took a while, but now I would say that sustainable finance is becoming a branch of finance.

Antoine Walter:

You’re both into the center for sustainable finance in Zurich. And I saw that it’s not that long that this center exists. If I’m right. It was created around 2015, 2016. So is it because it’s an emerging trend and an emerging matter, or is it just because it wasn’t existing Zurich before and now it exists?

Florian Heeb:

I think it has a very specific history. So it all started off with the founder, Falko Paetzold and some other people launching a program at Harvard University for ultra-high network next-gen. So kind of the next generation of these super rich families, kind of helping them to get started with impact investing. So there’s many very motivated people there, but they like the basics and out of this program came the idea that we need an academic center to do research on how to have an impact. How to actually move the needle of if money. And that’s, that’s how it at the central sustainable finance at university of Zürich was then founded.

What is Impact Investing?

Antoine Walter:

Actually you cracked the big name: impact. That is a topic that we addressed, or we scratched the surface, a couple of times on that microphone. I think, especially of a discussion I had with Kimberly Baker, from the elemental excellerator, or a bit more recently with Nicola Lei Ravello from White Stag investing. But I realized when I was preparing this discussion, we are having together, the three of us that we never really defined what impact means. Impact in general, and then impact investing. What’s going to be your definition of that word?

Florian Heeb:

I mean, I think that’s an excellent question. I think one that gets asked very too little. Julian and I have our own definition of impact that we use in our academic work, which is that impact is the change in a certain parameter of interest, for example, clean drinking water that is caused by your activities.

And I think that that sounds a bit trivial, but it has some very specific components that are rather tricky. So first of all, something has to change. So you have to observe some change in the real world.

I mean, this is a water podcast that could be, as I said, clean drinking water that could be, you know, water quality in a certain lake or whatever. I think that the hard part is, is the cause, that your activity causes something. So, and that’s quite hard to assess.

So you would need to think of what would have happened without your activity. What did your activity cause above and beyond what would have happened otherwise without your activity? So often this is called, you know, the counterfactual or the baseline or additionality of an action. So you always need to compare kind of what happened after you did something and what would have happened otherwise, and only above this kind of Delta that you have there, that’s your impact.

Who can have impact?

Antoine Walter:

When you mentioned this activity, who is active? Is it the company itself? Is it the investor, is it a combination of both?

Julian Kölbel

Well, I would say that’s, that’s actually very general. So whoever has activities, you know, lined up in front of her or him to choose from, and that’s the situation where you would think about impact and at some level, it’s very simple.

You want fresh air in the room. So one option is you open the window. Then you open the window and you have fresh air. So you had an impact on the climate, in your room. These are the simple cases. But the basic concept extends to more complicated cases.

So first of all you know, when we think about companies that operate in some social context, like, let’s say access to drinking water is, is the concern that the company is a business, like a brewery that actually uses a lot of water, fresh water and exports it away to other places.

So, so as this company, you should, you know, what are your options that you can do to somehow be part of the solution that all the people that live around your factory also have enough water, right?

There’s a range of things that you could do. You could hand it out directly, you could use less water, you could lobby the regulator and sort of improve the overall water management of the basin.

There’s many options and it’s a tricky problem, and it’s not clear what is the most impactful action, but I think the problem is the same. You have a target – I’m making this up, right – but the target might be okay. We want everyone in this valley to have, you know, these 25 liters, minimum of clean drinking, water, safe in your house. You know, and how do we reach that?

And then you can think of what are your options? What can you contribute towards that goal? I think that’s the essence of having impact thinking along those lines.

And then if you’re an investor, there’s an additional step. I think maybe that’s where you want to go.

The two layers of Impact: Company Impact & Investor Impact

Florian Heeb:

As, Julian, already explained, I think figuring out what the effect of a company on the world is, is quite a tricky endeavor in itself. But what stood out to us when we started research on the impact of sustainable investing is that we have two steps.

I mean, with investing, it gets even more complicated because obviously, you need to know what the companies you’re investing in are doing in the world. But more importantly, I would even say, you need to figure out what your effect as an investor is on this company.

So if you take this brewery, you know, how do you contribute to, or change what this company is doing?

So that’s why we came up with the definition of impact, you know. That’s how we provide this definition that sounds maybe a bit wordy and complicated, but in terms of investing, we have a very clear definition of what your impact as an investor is.

So we define company impact, which is the effect the company has on the world, on any given parameter of interest. And investor impact, which is kind of the change in company impact an investor causes. So I think it’s very helpful to distinguish between these two layers and that’s something that’s over often overlooked.

What is ESG?

Antoine Walter:

When we speak of company impact, there is another acronym that comes quite regularly. It’s this ESG. Can you just – and then when we’re done with the housekeeping and we can go to the deep dive – can you define these ESG? And all these things usually work by three, so we have ESG, but we have also the triple bottom. So these economic, social and environmental factors. And I was wondering if there’s a difference between those two, as we talk about sustainable investing and we talk about ESG. And is that exactly the same thing or are there some nuances between those two different concepts?

Julian Kölbel

I would say rather than nuances there’s general vagueness and that’s natural, you know, so I don’t say this with, with evil intention.

The ESG is generally about what do companies do with regard to the environment, social issues, governance issues, sort of the, generally the question, you know, how do they behave?

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And then it’s natural that this becomes vague because then what are all the social issues we care about? You know, child labor, perhaps. Water is half an environmental, half a social issue. How do we measure them? You know, how important are they relative to each other? So, so that all those questions make it difficult and vague what exactly is ESG and SDG.

And that’s a problem. How do you sort of come up with sound ways of assessing that?

But I think what’s very clear is that ESG triple bottom line, it’s about the company and it’s generally, you know, it can be about company impact.

That’s generally what it addresses. And investor impact is then something that comes on top sort of, you could look at the change in ESG as a sort of rough proxy, right. But simply saying, and this is what we sort of try to make very clear is that you just simply say, well, here’s a company with good ESG rating, I invested. Hence I, as an investor have changed the world. I think that is a statement we would always counsel to avoid because it’s wrong.

How objective are ESG Rating?

Antoine Walter:

If I was to play the devil’s advocate now, just for, for, for one minute, you gave us now some elements you say ESG might be vague because everyone can a bit see what he wants to see in this ESG. And you also said ESG rating. If I’m a company that wants to paint itself green, I can use my own rating and be wonderful. And by another kind of angle, I might be a bit less good. Do you think, this is one of the reasons why it’s a bit vague it’s because that way everyone can create his own rules or I’m a really looking at things with now a very negative view?

Florian Heeb:

I think one point, I think you have to say, I think these ESG ratings, I think that they were born kind of, mainly of out of the risk perspective, the financial markets have learned that there is the concept of risks in many ways.

And I think the early 2000’s, came this perception that there’s also, you know, material, environmental, social risks. So these metrics were used to measure these kinds of risks.

I mean, how likely is, you know, the companies getting sued because of some social problems they have or you know, that they cause environmental disasters and so on. So I think, that’s maybe one point we have to realize, that ESG is not necessarily seeing how green the company is, but kind of how it manages its, its environmental risks. But I think Julian has many things to say on how to measure ESG ratings and the problems with that.

The limits of ESG Ratings and why Impact shall be used instead

Julian Kölbel

We did a study called aggregate confusion, the divergence of ESG rating. So it’s a topic that I’ve been working on quite a bit with colleagues at MIT.

And yet, it’s natural that you come to different conclusions because it’s such a multifaceted issue that you’re considering, right. ESG alone environment, social governance are three vast topics. What are the criteria within those topics that you look at? How do you weigh them? How do you measure them? These are all questions that aren’t clear. I mean, it’s not obvious how you will do that.

It’s on the one hand natural that different providers come up with different ways of doing this and it has grown historically on the other hand, as you rightly point out, it does also cause problems then.

And I think the most severe problem is actually at the company level where a company says, okay, let’s become, a really good company but they also want to be rewarded for that. So they want to then look good and the ratings and it’s, it’s difficult to figure out how you do that.

So there’s really a measurement problem here. But I think, you know, I don’t want the perfect be the enemy of the good, so yes, we say they diverge, but still, you know, it’s an important issue.

And they’re also in most cases not completely off. Right? So it is an helpful data point. You just have to be aware that there is some, you know, that there is some uncertainty left if you use these metrics.

Then impact if I may transition, right. Sort of ESG was kind of the, I would say the past has been a lot about ESG and as Florian said, focused on risks. And I think this impact story is becoming way more important now. And that basically means often that you try to tie everything to SDGs, to the sustainable development goals, and that’s a trend that I see happening right now,

Impact, ESG, SDGs… What next?

Antoine Walter:

First, it’s a very valid point you make. It’s something we discussed with Paul O’Callagan on that microphone, where he was explaining that good enough approaches might solve much more than always to say that better and better and better and perfect can be achieved.

Done is better than perfect! So I fully subscribe to what you just explained. You, you alluded now to the UN SDGs, which is something, you’re right, which is in all the conversations, is it something new or is it a clever way that we’ve put on the table to just measure what we have to achieve in which direction we have to go?

I mean, in the water sector, we all now talk about SDG6 to a point, which is maybe even over the top. I mean, there’s no single company speech that doesn’t include how we are leaning towards the SDG6, whereas one can argue that we are doing many stuff in the day and that probably not 100% of it is going into this SDG6 direction. So is that again, another concept? So we would have impact, ESG, SDG, and maybe by the next calendar of the United nations, there’s, there’s a new acronym or is it like a marketing tool? How would you see that SDG element?

Florian Heeb:

I think it has all the aspects you’ve just mentioned. I think, first of all, I mean, we said, you know, impact is changing the parameter. So we have one problem. I mean, there’s like thousands of people out there with thousands views on what should be changed in which direction. So there, the SDGs really helped. They provide, you know, a global common view on where the developed world should move and, and that’s something you can use to, you know, to track impact.

I mean, are you making progress towards, you know, commonly agreed, clearly defined targets. So I think in this, these aspects, certainly I think thing SDGs will remain. And then what we see in the finance world is that the SDGs they become really popular.

Currently, there is like a proliferation, I would even say of SDG mapping, you know, exercises of taking portfolios and mapping all the companies to which SDG they could contribute. But again, currently I see in this respect to two major issues that we need to work on.

So first of all, that’s also what we see in our research. You know, owning impactful companies is not the same thing as having an impact. So we often see that people mapped companies in their portfolios to, I don’t know, this company contributes to SDG6 or this other one contributes to many other SDGs.

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So as we explained before, this is company impact at best, you know. This doesn’t explain, if you invest in that company, you don’t have, let’s say we have a company that really contributes to SDG6.

If you invest in the company, you don’t necessarily contribute to this impact or making them have more impact. But it, what it says is that you have exposure to SDG6. And I think these are really different concepts. I mean, it may be very valid if you, as an investor think, okay, “future lies in water” you know, there’s going to be a lot of more, you know, also regulation, issues, action, and so on, that pushes the water sector. So I want to have exposure, but that’s not the same as actually, you know, helping the world reaching the SDGs faster.

How can Finance have Impact?

Antoine Walter:

So let’s dig into that impact because I’m sorry, I sidetracked you a lot, but how can finance itself have an impact? We’ve seen how the company can have an impact. Let’s look at finance. What are the mechanisms that an investor can have to have impact on the company and hence be the tool of the market impact?

First mechanism of impact investing: Grow Green Companies

Julian Kölbel:

I think there are three major ways in which that works. The first one is there are companies that have a business model that, by what they do, have a positive impact on the world. Like, you know, let’s say a company that produces and distributes mosquito nets which are then important to prevent malaria. And even local employment. So that’s really a good idea if that company would grow.

And now sometimes companies, especially in developing markets have a problem, to tap into capital that allows them to grow. I mean, they can of course grow organically, but they could grow much faster with external financing.

Sometimes they don’t have that external financing. And then if you go in as an investor and you provide that external financing, then because of your investment, you know, there’s so many more mosquito nets distributed and that’s how you can have an impact: by growing companies doing something good, that do not have access to capital.

You can solve a problem here. And that’s a bit limited to small companies who actually need financing. Usually, that’s sort of pretty rare for larger companies, listed equities, and so forth. That’s also the classic impact investing space, smaller companies.

Antoine Walter:

So that’s the first mechanism at work: growing green companies. That’s the first lever. And you said there are three levers. So what, what would be lever number two?

Second lever of impact investing: Making Companies Greener

Florian Heeb

So basically first level we talked about, growing green companies, and then Julian already explained like the mosquito company for mosquito net company.

The second lever is making companies greener. So engage, as a shareholder, you own stocks. So you own part of the company. So you can engage with companies and try to change what they already do in a certain direction.

This growing in green companies is limited to places where there are financial frictions. Small companies, developing countries, emerging markets, and so on. Startups.

But there are also many spaces in large, big established companies where we really don’t see any evidence that, that by allocating your capital, you can change much in their growth path.

In these cases, there’s evidence that investors can change how green these companies are. So not how fast they grow, but how they go about their business. The options are for instance shareholder engagement.

Or really entering into a dialogue with the top management on how their environmental policy should look like, there’s voting. So you can, every shareholder in most countries can vote on shareholder resolutions. It’s a bit tricky depending on local legal systems, but you can vote.

And then we saw some impressive things. For example, with Exxon, just very lately that this is really a way to go. And obviously, as the third thing, there is really activist investing kind of investor schooling, taking stakes in the company, pushing a company going in one or the other direction.

So the second mechanism I would call it, making brown companies becoming greener, it maybe works best where companies are not the greenest to start with. So taking rather the laggards and then helping them to, to improve and taking the leader is already.

Could 8% of Impact Investing really solve Climate Change?

Antoine Walter:

On the second mechanism. There were many interesting stuff in your research paper, I just highlighted a couple of them just to be sure I understand it right. If I get your right it would take “only,” and I put brackets around the only 8% of sustainable investing in this capital allocation from brown to green to solve the climate challenges. Is that right?

Florian Heeb:

That paper is not our research, it is a study by Gollier and Pouget (2014). So here things get a bit tricky. I would say. We talked about two ways: giving capital companies to grow, then engaging with companies to change. Now, there’s also way another way, how you can make companies to change, but with capital allocation.

If you apply some rules saying, look, I only invest in companies that meet certain ESG levels or ESG standards that may provide incentives for companies to reach a standard. Because if you, if many investors allocate according to the same rule that will push up, share prices a little bit for these companies and then provide managers an incentive to actually adopt these standards.

That’s the thinking behind and very recently, they have been a whole host of models by top-notch economists and going in this direction stating actually, if investors have environmental, social tastes, these should create incentives for companies to change.

These 8%, that’s just one model on under gave some assumptions that it comes to the conclusion. If 8% of investors would, you know, have some, some climate preferences, could companies, you know, make measures the cost them up to I think, 5% or something like that of the revenue to change.

Theoretically: Yes. Practically…

But I think what’s important here is these are all theoretical models. So the question is about what happens in the real world. And what I find striking is, you know, if you look at the real world, Switzerland just had a market report on sustainable finance.

I think 50% of all the funds apply some sustainability strategies in, you know, in their investment process. So if you look at that, you would assume that if you’re already far above these 8%, but somehow we still don’t see the change, you know, needed to, to move really, to reach the SDGs or solve climate change. So I think there’s this discrepancy between kind of this model, projections and what we see in the real world. That’s something also, if you’re doing research on,

Antoine Walter:

If I recall your research regarding this, this investment into sustainable sustainability from, from the investment funds, it’s also a matter of which comes a bit back to what we were saying in the beginning on the ESG ratings. If everyone has its own mechanism in a way to rate the market, you can have half of the investment funds having sustainable investing in their vision of the world and the way they work, but they might be pushing in opposite directions so that it may be counterproductive. I mean, what’s fund one is doing is balanced by what fund B is doing.

So that means if you don’t have a consistent grid, to read the word and to read the ESG impact, you can have all the people doing sustainable investing, but with their own glasses.

Julian Kölbel:

Yeah. That’s true that so disagreement about which firms are brown and green will weaken the effect. And I think these models acknowledged that usually, and there are models.

So this 8% statement basically says, well, if 8% of global investors, everyone, you know including all sovereign wealth funds would completely exclude fossil fuel companies, I think that’s what they mean. And that clearly is not the case.

There are fossil fuel divestments, but I don’t have the numbers, but I don’t think it’s anywhere near, this 8% of the global market. Now if it were to reach that point, I think in our research, we sort of identify two key things to think about. The one is, you know, how big will be the change in share price.

What can be the negative impact of Impact Investing on “Brown Companies”?

So you could imagine you know, the share price of Exxon, for example, to sort of deteriorate, you know, maybe by 5%, maybe 10%, maybe 50%, we don’t know. But that’s one important parameter to think about. And then the other one is what is the cost for Exxon, you know to become eligible again, for the big pool of green investors.

And basically then it’s a simple calculation. As soon as you sort of you know, you gain more in firm value by investing X dollars to become a different firm than the assumption goes, managers should do that. But our impression is that this doesn’t happen very much especially on the big tickets, right? So I think a good example to look at is tobacco. Tobacco is one of the most widely screened industry in sustainable investing.

And since a long time already. Most sustainability funds do not include the tobacco industry, but the cost, of course, for the tobacco firm to become a non-tobacco firm is absolutely prohibitive.

There’s no way they can grow out of that. And even now, you know, there’s innovation, smokeless smoke and, and these things which may have merit I think it’s claimed, I think that they are causing cancer less, or maybe not at all. Maybe it’s even healthy. I don’t know,

But I haven’t seen a single sustainability fund who says, well, okay, now we accept tobacco. I think that the screen is still there. So I’m not sure how, you know, does this incentive really work, especially for the big tickets, right? You think about fossil fuels, you think about, tobacco, it’s more on the, on the small improvements. I think that’s where I see it working more.

Is “step by step” the path to victory?

Antoine Walter:

So that’s what I understood reading your paper. You can have more impact if you’re aiming for a company to change something, which is not very costly. So it speaks a bit along with what you said before, which is that we should not aim for perfection, but to do a bit better. And if we do a bit better, step-by-step on the long run, you achieve it.

But if you go directly for the big step, you just don’t have enough of a lever to make it happen. Regarding these appreciation depreciation, is it exactly working the same way for appreciation and depreciation, or is one of the two directions easier or more efficient to leverage?

Florian Heeb:

Hard to say! I would say, I would say, generally speaking, that’s it’s the same effect, but I think what’s always important to consider is, as Julian mentioned, if many investors go out of fossil fuels or let’s say tobacco, I mean, eco shares drop, and there is kind of evidence that there are lower. So currently, because many investors share kind of set that preference or rule.

Let’s take Tesla. If everybody wants to buy Tesla, obviously, share prices, go up a bit. But the problem you always face is that’s not for free. So if you’re an investor and you see that many investors invest in Tesla, just because they like electric cars, then it will drive up, share prices way beyond fundamentals so there will be a lot of analysts being there saying, “Now Tesla is overvalued, so we’ll sell.”

So I think that’s an important point to see about these public stock markets. There’s always, as soon as something drives up prices, little bit, you know, there’s a opportunity for arbitrage also in the other ways around it, as soon as, you know, something drops prices.

For tobacco, there are sin stock funds. They perform pretty well because of that because many investors have this taste. So share prices are a bit down. So you get them cheaper than what fundamentals would actually kind of demand from such stocks.

What is the strength of Impact Investing compared with Sin Funds?

Antoine Walter:

Which brings the question of what’s the size of sustainable investment compared to the overall finance market, because if there are green-minded funds and, and sin stock funds, how do they balance? And, in your paper, you cite a number of 30 billion us dollars for the overall sustainable investing. Is that the right figure?

Florian Heeb:

I think it’s 30 trillions. You have to add three zeros, which is an enormous sum to say, but then again, I think we, as, as, as we discussed, I mean, that’s a very, generic thing, sustainable investing.

So you have to look into details. What do these, these, these products actually do.

Sustainable Investing Vs. Fossil Fuel Subsidies

Antoine Walter:

Okay. 30 TRILLIONS changes the picture because I was really shocked. Sorry, I misread that one because, I was comparing this number with the about 300 billion us dollars, which are spent in supporting the fossil fuel economy one way or the other through various policies. I was thinking if that’s still 10 times higher, but it’s not 10 times higher. If I get it now, you will know your new number, right. It’s 100 times smaller, so good news?

Florian Heeb:

Good news. But at the same time, what, what was the number? You mentioned four fossil subsidies?

Antoine Walter:

According to the international energy agency in 2019, we had 320 billion us dollars of support to the fossil fuel economy, which is down. It used to be more, but still, it sounds almost anachronic, you know, in 2021 to see that we still have 300 billion of subsidies to that sector.

Florian Heeb:

I mean, if you look at this global numbers, the same report for every half, these 30 trillion of sustainable investing from, if you look at the amount of impact investments, so really investments with the aim of reaching impact, of growing small green companies, that’s only something like 450 billion. So that’s interesting to see, I mean, that kind of money actively trying to grow green companies is maybe counterbalanced with money, actively trying to keep the fossil fuel industry alive.

Antoine Walter:

You were mentioning the risk and you were mentioning ESG to be driven by risk, but somehow, disrupting the way you look at a market, such as transportation or energy or water is also a risk for the economy. So I can understand that there are activists or sustainable or impact investing on one end, but there are also people that say, “Hey, I hate disruption. I want things to be steady. And as they were, because that’s a safe investment”,

I think that’s a discussion I had with Nicola Lei Ravello on that microphone. We were saying that if you’re a pension fund, that the last thing you want is to have a risk that the pensions of a full country get disrupted because you invested in the sector, which is going to vanish. So yeah, I see different forces which are at play and that might be playing against each other.

Sustainable Investing can not save the World alone!

Julian Kölbel:

On that point, I think we want to draw a real clear boundary about what, what types of impact you can have as an investor in principle?

I think the thing is, as an investor, you act within the system of capitalism, you are, you know, by definition a capitalist, right. You’re sort of providing capital, you’re taking stakes. Right. So you’re working within the system and that’s why we say, well, you can achieve a lot of incremental changes as an investor and you can accelerate them and they are valuable.

But there are some issues that require political change. You know, there’s not a commercial solution for every problem. We have definitely not. There are many commercial solutions that thrive on wrong incentives that are politically generated.

And I think, you know, when we think of carbon emissions, I think, you know, there has to be a regulatory response. Sustainable investing cannot stop climate change on its own. It can help, but not on its own.

And so, so sustainable investing plays within the system with perhaps one exception. I thought about that because of the fossil fuel subsidies, right? We say, you know, divesting tobacco or fossil fuel stocks, we’re unsure about the impact there, because the incentive to change it’s hard to make a case for that.

But if the university of Cambridge for instance says, “okay, we’re out of oil”, which I think they did, they said recently it’s also a political message. It is a message that this leading world-leading university has concluded that this is a sector that’s somehow inconsistent with the future of the university and that they are committed to building a future that looks very different.

And then all of a sudden, if the university of Cambridge says that it sort of moves the goalpost, so it’s not a crackpot idea anymore to say, well, you know, the future is going to be very different. You know, now with the University of Cambridge is saying that, and also maybe an insurance company, you know, insurance company, or a pension fund is saying that, so it is also political.

And we see, these proponents of fossil fuel divestment I think they themselves concede that they know there’s not really an economic effect, it’s a political tool you know, to generate attention and also to hopefully bring on the way regulation that then ultimately has an impact.

Third mechanism of Impact Investing: Activism

Florian Heeb:

I think that’s exactly the third mechanism that we didn’t discuss yet that you mentioned in the beginning. And I think to sum a bit up, you, you ask about, you know, what can sustainable investing, do.

We see three different things it can do, and each has its limitations. You know, first of all, you know, investors can grow green companies, but it’s limited to two small companies, emerging market financial frictions that’s not, you know, the big bulk of the money, but, you know, a small portion of money can, you know, change very specific things locally and have, have a huge effect there.

But that’s not going to change, you know, the large world economy then there’s, you know, we said investors can make companies greener, but then we also say, but that only really works if you aim for, you know, small step-by-step improvements.

So if many investors do that and push for that, that’s going to move the needle, but it’s not going to cause a transformative change. We need to go to net zero in 2050, for example.

And then we say, I mean, even by, for example, divesting from certain industry, even if it doesn’t really directly affect these industries that can, you know, affect the political discourse. But again, that only works. If you were aware a very public, you know, if you do your announcement very publicly if you’re an investor too, that has some, you know, some standing in the public to start with.

Finance Activism can trigger Regulation Changes

And I think if you take that all together, I think it really sums up that sustainable investors can do a lot to move in a certain direction, but they cannot solve problems on their own. They need regulation.

I think this is something we increasingly see that this is a very crucial topic. And you, you ask about the pension fund. I mean, the interesting thing I think is a pension fund has, you know, maybe every average beneficiary has to wait 30 years getting his money back. So they have a long-term vision they’re usually diversified.

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So basically most pension funds that invest in the world economy maybe are you’re overrating, local economy, but, you know, so such investors would have all incentive to solve complex problems. So, I mean, they would have all incentives to stand in for tougher regulation for the current price. Because I mean, looking at the science, we know that we all would be better off in 30, 50 years, if you have tough regulation now or stringent regulation.

And I think this point at, you know, that the investors could have a very stronger voice in demanding stringent regulation of complete problems or freeriding externalities, for example, climate change.

… “Brown Companies” already do it!

And I think that’s a huge thing that could change. And also, Julian, you mentioned this divestment movement. I think there’s unfortunately a movement on the other side. I think there’s a lot of political lobbying of current fossil companies to stop environmental regulation.

Switzerland just lost a public referendum on the CO2 law. And there’s many reasons why it’s this population reject the laws. But I think it is striking that the referendum itself was launched by a kind of an industry association group, which was dominated by fossil companies.

Here, investors are the owners of companies, these pension funds own a lot of, these fossil fuel companies. And they cannot just tell them, you know, keep the oil in the ground that bumper, but maybe investors could demand from, you know, these, these incumbent companies that have to change this stop lobbying against required regulation.

Antoine Walter:

There are many elements in what you just said. First I love the irony of discussing with finance researchers based in Zurich and explaining to me that we should be illiberal that’s the market cannot regulate itself. That was really just to be the devil’s advocate.

But in your paper, you also show how if you’re a company in a sin industry, there’s not a strong incentive to do yourself a bit better because your industry itself is still going to be seen and cursed to be the bad guy. And the third element is something that was very interesting in the sustainability puzzle, which is the book from Alice Schmidt, an Claudia Winkler, because they show how, if you have system thinking and you just zoom out, all of this makes sense even for an oil and gas company to say, if I look at the bigger scale and I look on the long run, I will have to change.

But if you, if you keep being narrow-focused on what you’re doing currently and for the next five years, then, of course, there’s no strong path to victory in the change itself. So I’m not going to sidetrack fully the discussion to say, is it the limit of the Swiss democracy system to ask the population for long-term vision when it’s more, it’s probably easier to explain why the arguments are good for the next five years.

What is the strongest mechanism Impact Investing can use to do good?

So not going to sidetrack here. But we have these three mechanisms which play their role. So give capital to this green company, make Brown greener or this activist element of being going into indirect direction. What is the strongest one? If you have to pick one?

Florian Heeb:

That’s a hard question because mainly because they do entirely different things and are really hard to compare. So it has to be a mix.

Julian Kölbel:

You know, as a finance guy, I would advise diversifying over these three mechanisms because all of them are uncertain, right?

I mean, that’s serious if you’re, you know, if you want to have an impact as an investor, let’s say you’re a private person. And you are fortunate to have some savings and you want to invest them in a way that you don’t want to sort of completely lose them, so you don’t want to do charity and just give them away.

You want it to be an investment for your own future, but you also want this investment to have positive side-effects on the world. Then I would exactly do these three things. I would start with growing green companies here is a question of how much risk are you willing to take.

Finding the right Impact Investing mix

This is something that’s not super easy to do because you sort of have to look for specialized providers and it’s risky because these are small, you know, businesses that might go bankrupt or they are in countries that might just sort of collapse politically, and then your investment is gone. And so you have to be aware of that and decide how much of my portfolio am I willing to contribute to some sort of risky bucket.

And then you can go with that risky bucket and look for the most convincing products out there, or even do direct investments. And then with all the rest, which is probably going to be in public equity, bonds, maybe land and metals, you know, but, but for the, for the stuff that related to companies, I would try to find a fund that has as an institution, a convincing approach to engaging with companies, sort of push for change and also very clear kind of framework on what is it, how they assess companies.

So to make both effects work like both the sort of the voice effect, but also then the sort of exit where you say, well, this is, you know, this is the red line. If, if you don’t achieve that within three years where we’re simply out.

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Sort of some an institution or a fund that’s sort of really hits this effect. And ideally they even themselves know how to explain how they are impactful. We haven’t seen a lot of funds that do that, but I hope that they’ll get there soon. That’s what I would do with all the risks.

And then as a third thing, I would, you know, think about who am I, who listens to me, and tell people about what you’re doing with your investments and why. That may be your family. That may be your workplace. I don’t know who that will be. Maybe you are very famous. You know, if one of these, like if Cristiano Ronaldo did this, I think it will be extremely impactful. So I would use the third channel as well. According to your means, obviously.

Florian Heeb:

Yeah. I mean, basically truly what you’re saying is, is if you look at how most portfolios of investors are structured, it just makes sense to do everything you can, and then to diversify because you have, you know, very risky, small investments, very small buckets, and you have all these large companies in there anyhow. Capital allocation is maybe not the thing to go, but rather change.

Is Finance sufficiently supporting the Water Industry?

Antoine Walter:

Let me suggest you a last section in this deep dive, to put back my, my water goggles, my water hats. I was looking for the numbers in terms of, of money that flows to the water sector. And I found contradictory sources, but still, it will give us a, an order of magnitude in his Ted talk Sonaar Luthra, which is the CEO of Water Canary was saying that about 0.12% of the early VC investments, early VC money goes to water, citing a CB insights source for that.

I did my own calculation with BlueTech research numbers and the OECD numbers, and it resulted in 0.7% of money, which goes to the water sector.

So my interpretation of that would be to say that there’s not that much of the first pillar you were citing, which is pushing these green companies, which are emerging.

And on the other end, we have the finance market and the stock market for water, which is quite high right now, which means water companies are expensive on the markets, which sounds to me like the financial sector would say, Hey, this is resilient. This is sturdy, and this is going in the right direction. Let’s invest in that.

So is it another simplification to say that generally speaking, the finance market is not playing that much on the first mechanism for the water industry and quite a lot with the second lever? And do you think there would be chances to move a bit the needle and to push a bit more for investing into early-stage water companies, which might be able to solve issues like SDG6 or SDG9, or SDG15?

Better leveraging the “Make Green Companies Greener” mechanism

Florian Heeb:

Hmm. Good question. I mean, I have to say, we just did a research project together with a Water Accelerator called Seevas. So this was our colleague, Tim Kwan, exactly working on the topic. They work with startups mainly focused on middle east and other countries, which we could classify asnot perfectly working capital or not perfectly efficient capital markets how these startups could scale.

And they usually, they face a lot of problems receiving finance, kind of working on the reasons why and how that could change. And certainly I think water startups often do not have, you know, an easy start because often, you know, they, they serve populations that do not have, you know, a high ability to pay or, you know, they work in certain government with tricking things or working large infrastructure. So yeah, I think that is, I think this is a huge topic in itself, but certainly, I think there could be much more investment there.

Julian Kölbel

I think water is an example where capital, I’m not sure if that’s the bottleneck for, for that sector to get ahead. Right. And sort of water is just the ultimate common pool resource. And that a lot of what happens is just really dependent on how it’s regulated. And the price of water is absolutely central of course.

You can invest and bet on an increase in the price of water, you know, in the US with water rights, you can do that in other places potentially as well if you invest in a utility, but there’s always this big political game around, you know, where should the price of water really go.

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Because then if it goes up, then the investors cash in and yes, people will start conserving water, but also there’s going to be an crazy political backlash from all sorts of constituencies who say, well, Hey, you know, we need water and politically, that’s a pretty powerful message.

So I think personally the water sector is a really difficult one to, to invest in. I think there are probably very good opportunities. There are definitely, we need good solutions. But I think without progress on the regulatory and political front we’re going to see the same problems that we’ve seen for the past decades simply continue in many ways. I think it’s, you know, there is a case for water saving technologies especially in agriculture but in the places where there’s little water that has been, you know, it has been implemented to a large degree already very often.

Is it possible to scale innovation in the Water Sector?

Water is a really hard sector to found a successful startup, right? It’s if you, if you think about who you compete with, you compete with people who sort of invent Skype the next Skype, right. Sort of it’s a bit of software and you can scale to billions of people. You never have this, I think with water, like it’s always very local. It often entails sort of investment in infrastructure. That’s you know, all that makes it really difficult to find a startup in water, and that makes it not attractive to the to the venture capitalists.

Antoine Walter:

Is sorry, because if you look at infrastructure, the way it’s done, I’m fully with you fully agree. Now that has been, endemically grown from what the Romans and the Greeks have been doing millennial.

But we could be having something fully decentralized. I mean, I had on that microphone, for instance, Navkaran Singh Bagga, who is the CEO and founder of AKVO atmospheric water generation systems. And that’s just an example, not to say that that is the solution for, for everything, but if you’re in a tropical zone, which is about a zone where 3 billion people live in the, in this world, you have good conditions to generate water from the air, wherever you at about 10 times less money than both of the water. And there’s at any time in the air about 1.5, the Geneva lake of water. So that is a fully distributed solution.

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And he is looking at a way to do it as a service. So you could be imagining to have a rapid distribution of his machines or similar machines, really not doing Navkaran’s advertising but he was a cool guest to have to put him in between the light. And that means that you could have this path to hypergrowth.

Hypergrowth again! An hidden gem of Impact Investing?

That’s certainly possible because you invest you burn money because you put your devices everywhere, and then you run them as a service. And then it’s, it’s not Skype. Sure. There’s still a hardware element in it, but it has similar patterns to how the word of SaaS were works today. So, sorry, I didn’t want you to, to get you off here.

Julian Kölbel:

I think that is a beautiful example, you know, for a potential impact investment. And of course you would have to sort of look at that in the detail. Could it really work before you commit your money to it? But I think that’s what we would love to see is that there’s broadly in the population.

There’s a lot of people who want to have some impact with their money. And I think it could be very powerful if they said, well, okay, 1% of what I do is going towards something very risky, like this water capturing project. If no one has ever tried it before. We honestly, you know, it’s uncertain if this will pan out, but we’re willing to risk our money to see whether it works out, right. Because if no one does, you know, it will never see the light of day. And that would be great if more of that would happen.

Regulatory context needs to help (and incentivize)

Florian Heeb:

But I think again, I mean, coming back through regulatory environment, I think Julian, you already mapped it out for water, that’s really local and really, you know, patchy. So I think that’s, that’s the interesting thing about climate. I mean, there’s like a whole boost of climate startups. I mean, it’s very, because I think that the global regulatory environment is, is at least moving in the direction where, you know, you can be rather certain that you’re going to get paid to some extent for reducing carbon emissions.

Voluntary carbon markets are, are skyrocketing. You have emission trading systems popping up. So, I mean, there’s kind of, it’s obviously the same, same problem. If you do innovation and startups innovate where you solve externalities, in some ways somebody has to pay. And so here, of course, to a certain extent impact investors can jump in and say, okay, I’m going to accept, you know, lower returns, high risk, but they’re not going to change the fundamental problem.

You know, solving water is a common pool. So a willingness to pays off, not that high. So, but, but there, I think the coop, I mean, there is interesting, you know, financing mechanisms talk about results-based finance. So which we basically have with car markets. I mean, if you have a good project that reduces CO2, you can get, you know, finance by that could also be using the water sector.

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Our colleagues at for example roots of impact, they’re pioneering, what they call sink. So, you know, outcome specific payment, looking for payment contracts with companies that achieve, you know, some milestones and they have applied that to the wastewater sector, for example, with the same logic. I think it’s in some developing countries nobody’s willing to pay, or the government is not willing to pay yet for the service, of cleaning wastewater.

Impact Investing can jumpstart initiatives for governments to then carry on!

But in a few years likely that that will be the case or in future. So jumping in it’s often development financing, corporations that jump in and say, okay, we’re going to pay you for that externality. We pay your price per you know, could you be commuter of treated wastewater contractually over the next 10 years?

And once you have set up debts and have set up a system and have, you know, run a successful business model, this, you know, dif getting paid for the externalities, it’s much more likely that the government will jump in later on and then really pay for, for solving that

Antoine Walter:

It’s some of coming back to this topic of risk, because you could, I mean, look at the international space station, they work with one glass of water per day. So you could be solving the full water scarcity problem on earth by just saying let’s reuse everything.

Of course it is by far not economical, so it’s not going to happen, but you can move a bit the needle. So it’s beats more economical in some regions. And that way, what does cars do you get somehow mitigated because you reuse on several passes, the same water.

I could keep pushing for another few hours here on that topic. But I’m cautious of your time. What I can propose to you, nevertheless is I had double the question then the one I asked for this first paper, whenever you publish your next paper, this microphone is open to you anytime. So if I wasn’t scaring you too much with my stupid questions, consider it’s an open invitation, and happy to have another conversation. So I propose you to switch to the rapid-fire questions.

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Rapid fire questions:

Antoine Walter:

So in that last section, I’m going to try to keep the questions short and that if you can keep the answers short as well we will have a back and forth, and don’t worry; I’m the one who sidetracks all the time. My first question is what is the most exciting project you’ve been working on and why?

Florian Heeb:

I mean, for me in our common work, with Julian, it’s certainly our investor’s guide to impact, because it really enabled us to take like four years of research putting in into a very visual way. And I’m really happy that the resonates with many practitioners. if you be saying, ah, no, that makes it clearly understandable, like a very complex topic. So it really moves the conversation. I’m really happy about that.

Julien Kölbel:

I completely agree. It’s that work on investor impact because somehow we addressed this big question, you know, what, what does that sustainable investing trend really do? And I don’t think we have all the answers of course, but, but we have some, some good ideas and, and that was really nice to also then pass on these ideas to lots of people who really care about this and appreciated that we put the work in.

What’s your favorite part of your current job?

Julian Kölbel:

It’s actually well, the best thing is to think with Florian about the next thing that we would like to do. It, contrasts nicely with the things that we’ve already signed up to do, that we have to finish. So, but talking about the next thing is my favorite thing.

Florian Heeb:

Completely agree. Yes. It’s catching out the big ideas.

What is the trend that you see, which we should watch out in the water industry?

Florian Heeb:

I think there will be a lot of development in innovative financing mechanisms to tackle water issues. That’s something I’m really curious about, but here our colleague Taryn Kwan could be a really interesting person to talk to.

Antoine Walter:

Thanks for the suggestion. It’s interesting that you mentioned that because many of my guests have mentioned that we have to be innovative with the business models and the way we look at that part of the market. And the other side of that same coin is that we are an industry that is full of water engineers. So we are probably not the best to come up with innovative ways to finance and to have clever business models.

So there’s probably some synergies to find here.

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What is the thing you care about the most when you start on a new project and what is the one you care the least about?

Julian Kölbel:

So one thing we figured out would be good at the start is to think about what is a misconception that is severe in terms of its consequences and many, many people have it that we can rectify, right? If you can do that as a social scientist, I think you have real impact in the truest sense of the world that you change the way, like, sort of changed the way people think about problems in a good way.

So, that’s something we care a lot about and the least… I couldn’t say what I care the least about, but, but this is the thing we focus on. And then the rest is after that,

Florian Heeb:

I would agree.

Do you have sources to recommend, to keep up with the latest trends?

That’s a bit of advertisement in our own, you know, have a look at our investors guide to impact, have a look at our paper titled “Can Sustainable Investing Save the World?” reviewing the mechanism, goes off investor impact. That’s basically what we discussed today. I

On the CSPs homepage, we always publish our latest research. We have a medium blog. Very, we kind of have more kind of, you know, opinion pieces on where things are going or could go.

Antoine Walter:

It’s a very interesting race that I would really advise to the people listening to this. Doesn’t get sufficient collapse in my opinion. So if you’re on medium, just give it a look. I’ll put the link in the, in the, in the show notes. And I think you somehow already cracked it, but…

Would you have someone to recommend me that I should definitely invite on that same microphone?

Julian Kölbel:

Well, we would warmly recommend our colleague Taylor Kwan who has done research product into how water entrepreneurs and impact investors find together or not. And I think she’ll have a lot of interesting things specifically for your show. That’s the main person I can think of!

Florian Heeb:

Maybe also, I think it would be maybe interesting to, I mean, this, she does a large project together. If this save authority mentioned key accelerator of water startups. So maybe you could talk to them trying to, because I think we now gave you a Roger, you know, top level view on impact and financial markets.

The people at SEVAS, they’re much more concerned with, you know, kind of the daily struggles of real life, you know, startups in the water sector. So they have a completely different perspective. I think that’s, that’s really interesting.

Antoine Walter:

but really your point of view was very interesting in the sense that we see quite often the one industry as a silo working on its own. And it’s good to see that we are not alone in this world. There is a number picture, and as much as I keep repeating on that microphone, that we’ve never seen a water unicorn never happened.

We’ve never seen an environmental unicorn neither. So sustainability is not really doing much better to that sense than the water sector. And probably there are synergies to leverage. I mean, there are so many clever Ideas in energy, which you could transfer it to water or in transportation or in climates that you could just apply in water instead of reinventing the wheel all the time.

So that was at least for me. Very, very interesting. So thanks a lot for your time, both of you. And as I already said, but I stand my point. Whenever you publish your next paper I have at least half of my questions about the previous paper, which I can still ask you. I’m sure I’m going to have double the ones for the new one.

Last thought? Let’s create a Water Impact Investing Fund!

Julian Kölbel:

It was a pleasure discussing would be our pleasure. Definitely. I just, if I may, because I’m now product to think about how can you have impact in the water and a little bit from this general question, you know, there are these water funds that are sort of thematic funds where you say, you know, in, in there, there are water utilities and water tech companies and also beverage companies.

And I think Florian and I were both maybe that’s not the most straightforward way to go about saying, okay, I want to make a difference in the world of water. Because the criteria, whether you’re included or not included in the fund is sort of pretty binary, right? Sort of either you fulfill the industry classification or not. And then it is the capital allocation case, which is also difficult to make given that these are large companies, but what I would find very interesting is a fund that says, okay, we focus on because water is relevant in most industries that have any reasonable operations, right.

So you could have a fund that doesn’t do ESG, but really sort of focuses on, you know, how does a corporation deal with water? Like, you know, what are the processes for, for internal reuse? How do they avoid dangerous chemicals leaking out? How do they collaborate locally with the community? And I think most importantly, how do they onboard innovative water technology? Because that’s usually the thing that makes the life of a startup, if you, if you make a deal with the corporate to say, you know, we’re buying a hundred units of your thing and sort of integrating them

So so a fund that focus on that sort of, you know, integration of new water technologies in big corporation sort of, you know, could do engagement on that front, to facilitate that and also scores companies on how good they are with that. I think that would be really interesting. I haven’t seen it, but I think that’s something to maybe think about in the wider community of water professionals to work in that direction. So what I find, that’s not a thematic water fund, but a sort of good water practices fund across all industries.

Florian Heeb:

So you’ll see, that’s exactly the kind of ideas we like to discuss and sketch out. But really at sometimes maybe we have to start one of these funds.

Antoine Walter:

So next time we discuss, we discussed about your water fund and I love the pitch that you just made. So if someone listens to that and wants to to act on the promise, just, just contact me, I’ll be passing it over!

Other Episodes:

FREDsense: Revolutionizing Water Quality Monitoring with Biosensor Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 7 May 2025

Swirltex: Revolutionizing Wastewater Treatment with Bubbly Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 30 April 2025

Blue Foot Membranes: The Next Evolution in Water Filtration

By Antoine Walter | 16 April 2025

Echo River Capital: Pioneering the Future of Water Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 3 April 2025

1001 Fontaines: Engineering Sustainable Water Access Through Social Entrepreneurship

By Antoine Walter | 22 March 2025

Amazon’s Water Footprint: Tech Giant’s Quest for Water Sustainability

By Antoine Walter | 19 March 2025

Turing: The AI Revolution Quenching the Water Industry’s Thirst for Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 26 February 2025

Altillion: Pioneering Digital Intelligence for Water Asset Management

By Antoine Walter | 6 February 2025

Flocean: Pioneering Ocean-Based Water Solutions

By Antoine Walter | 15 January 2025

Botanical Water Technologies: Harvesting Liquid Gold from Plants

By Antoine Walter | 4 December 2024

The post 3 Powerful Tactics Impact Investing shall better use to Save the World appeared first on (don't) Waste Water.

Akvo produces Water from Air, aka Limitless Water from Unlimited Air

What we covered:

How water may be a bit less scarce than we all thought, considering there are 140 trillion liters of water up in the air at any point in time

How the decentralized nature of Water from Air is an enabler for the solution to grow

How AKVO refined and optimized a pretty simple technology

Key Hints on the best ingredients to get your water innovations adopted by the early and late majorities 

How Water from Air is by no means a silver bullet – it only has the potential to solve the water challenges of 3 billion people 

How competition in your markets and applications is a good sign that you’re on the right track

How paying for water is still not a given, and how challenging it is to explain that you’re charging for the technology, not the resource.

The perks of being a bootstrapped business

How AKVO tripled its size in the past three years and how Navkaran expects his company to triple again by the end of this year

How the company ambitions to turn Water from Air into Atmospheric Water Generation as a Service

International expansion, prepaid water distribution, fighting boredom and much more

… and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨  

Teaser:

Resources:

Send your warm regards to Navkaran on LinkedIn

Visit Akvo’s website

is on Linkedin

Antoine Walter on LinkedIn

Infographic: Water from Air

Full Transcript:

These are computer generated, so expect some typos

Antoine Walter:

Hi Navkaran, welcome to the show.

Navkaran Singh Bagga:

Hi Antoine, Thank you so much for having me!

Antoine Walter:

I’m very interested in the topic we have today. It’s something I had on my bucket list for a while. So I’m really, really looking forward to that discussion. We will be having together, but traditions first, I need to ask you to send me a little postcard from your office where you are today, exceptionally for our discussion today. So you’re in Kolkata, right? So can you tell me something about Kolkata

Navkaran Singh Bagga:

Originally my family ancestry is from Punjab, which is in the north of India. My great-grandfather moved here to bingo before partition to Kolkata is a cultural hub of what I would like to say because you know, it’s seen a lot being a port city, the British came here first. This used to be the British capital of the colony. And Kolkata has institutions which are very, very old. And it has a lot of influence at the, you know, because of the colonial aspects, there’s a town there’s something you would relate to Chandernagor, which are not too far from Kolkata, which used to be a French colony, right? So the French influence is there and the British influence is. And then there’s a whole cultural influence. So Kolkata is a melting pot of different kinds of things.

Antoine Walter:

That’s the beauty of British and former French empire is that wherever you go in the world, you can always find kind of an influence. I don’t know if it’s a beauty or a drawback by the way, but I’m French. So I have to be arrogant a bit. So I’m going to say it’s a beauty.

Navkaran Singh Bagga:

I, I think you know, the past is the past, to be honest. And yeah, but there’s a lot you can attribute in the present to the past. So anything that you want to go on does not necessarily have to have a negative influence.

A second generation entrepreneur with a Water Focus

Antoine Walter:

You mentioned the influence from the past. And actually that’s something that struck me in your, in your Ted talk is that you are a second generation entrepreneur and you’ve started your Ted talk saying that, that you’re you you’re drawing somehow on the former generation. How important was that to you?

Navkaran Singh Bagga:

I am a second-generation entrepreneur, meaning I currently work in a business environment, which my father started. And my job is the second boat. Second generation that is to kind of take it forward and diversify. And I’ve been working now for 14 years and that’s pretty much what I’ve been doing. So we started with our core family business of a merchant export house. You should do a lot of international trade. And I did my undergrad in the UK. Then I came back and my father really wanted to always have a hotel. So you open up mid-segment, hotel in Kolkata, and it started with that. And then I got bored of that in about two years. And then I started looking at the things and I started to kind of look at things that I can diversify. Then I got into acquiring a steel unit.

Navkaran Singh Bagga:

Here in Kolkata ran that for about four years. It was really capital intensive, decided to find a strategic partner and gave away controlling stake. Once I gave him a controlling stake, I basically became redundant because I used to run the plant. And then I was born again. When I was bored again, I started to look at else I could be doing. And you know, this is around mid 2016 and I thought the future is going to be SDG (UN Sustainable Development Goals). It’s about going to be renewables. It’s going to be about how can you be sustainable? And I was looking at toying with it all kind of renewable power, looking at energy, and then water really interested in it’s a lot of research on water and this information I’m going to give you next is probably on just one more podcast. And this information is kind of the secret is that while I was doing a lot of research of water. Haveyou seen the movie the big short?

The inspiration to enter the field of Water from Air all started with a movie!

Antoine Walter:

No!

Navkaran Singh Bagga:

OK, you shall read the book and watch that movie. So There’s a movie called the big short, right? And it starting a Christian Bale and it’s about the mortgage crisis in the U S and how there was a group of people that were hedging against it. While everybody said it wouldn’t crash. These people, the people who bet against you and I was really influenced by others going and Christian Bale’s character. Who’s a genius of basically saw this happening at the end of the movie says that now all his investments are in water. So I kind of took from that and said, maybe I’m going down the right path. This is where water’s going to be. And, you know, four years later for the first time in December, 2020, that California future water futures are traded. So water is fast becoming a commodity. And to be very honest, I can talk about sustainability and the green, but I am a businessman. So I looked at the business opportunity and start running behind it.

Water is a fertile ground for successful investment

Antoine Walter:

It’s very interesting because you’re bridging many topics we’ve been addressing on that microphone before we were discussing Water Futures with Nicola Lei Ravello. And we were discussing how all of that is creating a new environment and also the elements that sustainable development ease apart of environment, for sure as a part of humans, for sure, but needs to be cash positive and to bring value. And that’s something that we discussed for instance, with Gaetane Suzenet. So interesting topics that you bridge I’d love your take as well to say that entrepreneurship is something you need to fight boredom. I mean, that’s not everyday that you hear that. So very interesting matter, but within your dive into water, actually, you could have taken any kind of water opportunity, but what you were looking at is something quite unique. Can you tell us which kind of water you are looking at with Akvo?

Navkaran Singh Bagga:

We look at the statistics, right? So the world in general, can’t complain about a lack of water because we literally have a water body, or a water source close by. So we kind of sit around and say, oh my God, we’re going to run out of water and say, it’s a finite earth with all every single natural resource is renewable, right? So if you have water, the water cycle, it’s a whole rotational cycle. The challenge that comes in is that how accessible is potable water. And that is where the real challenge is. People aren’t facing crisis to bed or meeting hygiene. The crisis that they face is with potable water, whether it is the lack of potable water or the lack of good quality potable water. So whatever you consume really needs to be at a certain level. And I thought that the easiest way to go after would be the drinking water segment. With Akvo, the idea was that when you looked at the technology basic core technology, it’s a decentralized system and the always talks. And my core belief is atmosphere water generator to water is what solar power is to power, right? You can always go modular. You can go decentralized. You don’t need to be feeding a grid. You don’t need to be feeding a central source. And I found that interesting to kind of create something with just power. And that’s why I completely went after it.

Water from Air: The sources of Atmospheric Water Generation

Antoine Walter:

So you’re jumping ahead in the topic. Atmospheric actually let’s define that one. You know, I have to say, I didn’t know there was that much water in the air. So I discovered that when researching for that episode, and I found that on your website that there’s 37.5 trillion gallons of fresh water in the air. If I translate that for European units, that makes 140 trillion liters of water, which makes 140 cubic kilometers of water. And if I take a European example, you have the Geneva Lake, which somehow in the middle of Europa and the Geneva lake has 89 cubic kilometers of water in it. So it’s 1.5 Geneva Lake, which is just out there in the air somehow. But it was wondering reading that figure. What are we talking about here? Is it the clouds you see out there? Is it just humidity in the room? Is it a combination of those? What exactly is this water, which is out there in the air?

Navkaran Singh Bagga:

The calculation is entirely based on how much water vapor is present in the air in totality, whether it’s about the clouds, whether it’s about the humidity in your room or the humidity and ambient air. So a collective figure. I don’t I’m not sure if you could pinpoint it, you know, down to the figures, because we also got these figures off of the internet when we were doing our research with the kind of source that we have, because it’s very difficult to measure. But the whole idea there is to kind of cumulatively tabulate, that this is the kind of water that’s always present in the environment. That’s the way it look at it. And it is literally an unlimited source of water.

Antoine Walter:

That is an interesting take. You, you have as well it’s to say, if you’re taking something in groundwater, I mean, it’s a reservoir. You take it, it might be replenished in some way, but still you’re taking, it’s not all going there. Whereas the water cycle is always turning. So there’s always going to be this amount of water. And it’s a matter of scale that we see how much there is not it’s about is it’s when treated more or less, doesn’t change the figure. So this infinite source of water, you you’re tapping into that, but how did you came to the idea of saying, Hey, that’s what I’m going after. So

Navkaran Singh Bagga:

I was doing a lot of research on what kind of water businesses I can get into. And when I looked into kind of, you know, looking at wastewater recycling, or was it desalination? So I saw that while they are technology, they’re kind of standard mechanical tech, which required a lot of infrastructure. So let’s give an example of desalination, right? Desalination is probably the answer to the water problem in the middle east temporarily, because you look at the desert and I’m sure if you’ve been to Dubai or any other middle Eastern city, you will see that they have micro-irrigation on the planters next to the foot pots on the pathways. And that’s insane because you’ll say this was a desert. So I don’t think the issue is with water in general, right? The whole idea is that the idea of making this particular technology accessible requires a certain amount of huge infrastructure spending, whether it’s through large corporations or through government, the idea with atmospheric water is that it’s a decentralized system. It doesn’t require transmission, which means you can literally put the water in people’s hands. You can buy a machine, plug it into the wall and have water generating from the minute goal. So that kind of power is infinite.

Producing Water from Air: how did it start for Akvo?

Antoine Walter:

That’s the part I understand. The part I don’t understand, you know, is personally when I’m sitting in a room, the first thing I’m thinking is not, oh, there’s a lot of water here. Let me capture that. So I, I imagine you sitting maybe on your couch and with the air conditioner next to you and seeing that water dropping from the air conditioner and thinking, Hey, there’s something to do there, you know, a bit like Archimedis going out of this bath and saying, Erica, I have something

Navkaran Singh Bagga:

Very candidly as dramatic as I would like to make it sound. You know, there’ve been people in the space before me, there will be people in this space after me. I just tried to make a better mouse trap. The whole idea was to kind of look at existing tech and see how we can indigenize it. Can we make this in India? Can we better the technologies that exist? Can we make it more efficient? And that’s what we started set out to do. So we understood that the technology is quite simplistic, to be honest, right? It’s what? A de-humidification through refrigeration. You take an ambient air. Anybody who studied physics or even basic common sense will know the concept of dew point. It’s a hot day or a glass of water out. You immediately see a, you know, condensate on the outside of the glass.

Navkaran Singh Bagga:

And the idea is that while that works at that scale, can you replicate that process consistently to kind of generate certain copious amounts of water, you know, in larger quantities . Being the entrepreneur that I am, one of my core strengths has been to kind of get good teams together. So, you know, I immediately started looking for people in the refrigeration space, in the electrical space to try and see if we can build a machine of our own. And it, took us a whole year to kind of, you know, build the first machine up. And we saw this actually does work. And while doing our studies and doing our designs, we ended up with the most power efficient DWG in the world. So our machines consume the least amount of power per liter, which makes us kind of unique. But like I said, but I wasn’t interviewed before about two, three years ago on what the news channels.

Navkaran Singh Bagga:

And the question that I was asked is, are you proprietary? Are you going to protect this? And my idea was the more players we can invite to come into the space. The more we can get the movement going. So I would kind of look at getting more people into the space and better the tech. So it came become conventional thing. Water is a space which is unlimited in pure market perspective. So they cannot ever be too many players. And that’s how this came to me. Like I said, I was looking at various technologies and this happened to be one of them, which really got my attention. And the whole idea of having single units, not requiring infrastructure is what really caught my attention.

Competition is a good sign for your business idea!

Antoine Walter:

Very interesting. What you say about competition, because usually it’s the, the counter intuitive thing of entrepreneurship is that if you’re alone on the market, it’s bad news because whether you have a bad idea and that’s the reason why you’re alone or the market is not ready yet to adopt it. And which means you don’t have competitors or colleagues to help you push into that direction. And actually your technology is in this kind of spot because you are creating water from a new source. So it’s not like another treatment technology that would be then connected to a network. It’s really something, something different let’s discuss, which problem you solve. What is the typical application of your new source of drinking water in which place to which community, how do I have to imagine that part?

Navkaran Singh Bagga:

The lowest hanging Fruit currently for our tech is like I said, portable water because drinking water is something that you can still attribute the cost and people already have a cost attached to it, whether it’s from a personal perspective or an enterprise perspective. One of the biggest case studies we have is an installation. You’re in the refinery in Kolkata categorical, which is a government that defined refinery called the union or a corporation. And, you know, they have a 300 acre refinery and they had a lot of drinking water issues. So they had two, three options ahead of them, right? They could either go down to the groundwater route and individual drinking water points where they have to constantly keep filtering the water. Again, problem is industrial area, a lot of arsenic in the groundwater there. So those technologies really cost a lot of money. Secondly, you could continuously keep buying water, which again is a cost.

Navkaran Singh Bagga:

They decided to go with our technology because they have six water points individually, which are completely transmission free. They just installed it. Plugged the power on, and suddenly 900 people drink water from our machines every day in the refinery. Similarly, we have case studies in the UAE, in Qatar, in India. The biggest market we have is in south India and Chennai because that’s where people are used to paying for water in the Metro cities. So currently the low-hanging fruit for us is drinking water. You know, I can’t really go in and say, you know what? People may irrigate their lands with my water. No, would be really expensive, but from a drinking water perspective, we’re getting there, we’re getting it a place where our cost is acceptable.

Capturing water from air: a new water source

Antoine Walter:

So basically when people are off grid or when acquiring water would be very expensive or simply when there there’s no water. So you need to find a new source.

Navkaran Singh Bagga:

I’ll explain you one more challenge, which probably you have not seen because you live in the Western world. And, you know, I did my undergrad in the, you can even drink that water, right? And so the idea is that you don’t have these issues in India, you have these kinds of issues, right? So we started the issue of non-availability water. India is becoming a huge market for water purifiers. So even if I have a water purifier and the building complex, I live in needs to cart in two tankers of water a day, which means there are times when our water purifiers aren’t working such as I’ll have drinking water with the solutions to that. So I don’t have dependence on water source. The second part is, let’s say you have a water source, but the water source is contaminated or impure, or very you know, has high TDS, or it can’t be purified as well as normal water would be.

Navkaran Singh Bagga:

So then the consumer cost of filtering that water goes up quite high. The technology we’re making is mostly currently suited for urban areas because we are heavily power dependent. So I can’t really keep talking about off grid because we really can’t be off grid. Unless you have your, you have a solar plant or a wind plot, you know, wind turbines going on, where you get more. So we’re an on-grid Solution to provide you portable water. So whether it’s an apartment complex in Chennai or Anheuser Bob, or in Bangalore or Dubai or Qatar, that’s where we’re going. In some projects we’re working on the Philippines. For example, there, we’re talking about getting machines to schools in remote areas. So that’s probably where they’re coming to kind of not having to cart that kind of water, but we are grid dependent. So we can’t really completely talk about being in off-grid areas.

The optimal conditions of Atmospheric Water Generation

Antoine Walter:

And what are the ideal ambient conditions for your technology?

Navkaran Singh Bagga:

As any renewable tech, You know, we come with the limitations because we are tapping into a source, which we can’t control. You know, just like solar power. You cannot install solar panels in in Norway or in Scandinavian countries, right? Because you really don’t get a lot of sunlight. So similarly we need hot climate with high humidity. So tropical environments are the most suited for Atmospheric technologies.

Antoine Walter:

We’ll see, you mentioned competition before. What’s interesting is that your competition has, has many shapes because actually you’re competing with water that you put in a truck and you bring somewhere, you’re competing with bottled water and you’re competing with all the technologies, which will get atmospheric air, but not necessarily the same than yours. Is it a green field and you can go with whatever you like? Or do you think at some point there’s going to be one winner and hopefully it’s you, because if it’s not you, I mean, do you know the competition from blue reference don’t exist anymore? When DVD was replaced, it was blue Ray and the all the 20 ones just died out.

Navkaran Singh Bagga:

I don’t think that’s the future. The future is a combination of different techs which can come together. So whether it’s a combination of, let’s say wastewater, regeneration it’s combination, rainwater, harvesting it’s combination of air to water. The idea is to kind of pour in as many renewable sources as possible and come together to collect a solution. Right? I personally believe that in the developing world, not so much in the developed world, the idea is to kind of make the urban area sustainable first because that’s where the highest level consumption is. What happens in a place let’s say in India is because of the large tax-paying population lives in cities. The pressure on cities to kind of ramp up open development is at its highest. And for that reason, the rural areas get neglected because it’s a trickle down effect. So the idea for me and the world I see is as more and more urban areas become sustainable, then the real focus of governments will be the kind of provide infrastructure to the rural area. So the solution I bring in or AKVO brings in is to bridge those gaps. It’s not to replace though. Like I said, the whole revolution of the power industry, we went from Tomal to solar wind and so on and so forth just because solar power is there doesn’t mean that the tower plants are shut down. It just means that the new plants that are coming up are being invested in, in that space. Similarly, we heard of augment supply. We can never be a complete supply. It’s just not possible.

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Inspiration from the Energy Sector and Competitor in Atmospheric Water Generation

Antoine Walter:

It’s a very interesting analogy you make with the energy sector. So that makes it much clearer. Thanks for that one. I have to bring one of your competitors are on the table because it was mentioned on that podcast. A couple of times they used to be called zero mass water. Now they’re called source global from an external point of view. The main difference between what they do and what you do is that they target more of the off-grid with the solar element. And you, as you explained, you’re more on grid, but I was really surprised last year, when I looked into the topic to see how much almost hate they were getting. And When I was watching your own Ted talk, I saw a couple of comments on YouTube, and it was just wondering, I mean, people are saying you, Hey, come on, you’re explaining the basis of the water cycle.

Antoine Walter:

And I was like, yeah, sure. He, he does that because it’s about this. And if people knew about that, then we wouldn’t have to do everything we have to do today in the water industry, because they would be knowing what the challenges are and what the solutions are. And the other was, come on, it’s a lie. It’s not working. That thing is just not working. And it just shows you how difficult it is to, to come with, with something new in that area, with something people haven’t been touching and experiencing for 30 years. And I was wondering, how do you react to this kind of skeptics or almost haters?

Dealing with “Haters”

Navkaran Singh Bagga:

I made it my single mission to educate them, moderate, whatever answer. The first thing I did when I started this winch up to be honest, was I, while I was investing in tech, I didn’t invest heavily in marketing, but there’s one thing I invested in. And that was a PR forum because I needed more and more people to talk about this more and more people don’t know that such a tech exists, the conversions will happen. The market will build out on its own. But you know, when I first started out, I out of a hundred, people are talked to at least 90 said. “What?! Can you do that? Can you make water from air?” I wasn’t the first player in the market. You have to understand the seven people before me, which means the lack of education around the stacking concept was prevalent.

Navkaran Singh Bagga:

My single focus has been to kind of break that myth. Number one, number two, as far as we get hate, and we talk about competition and now what other people are doing. Yes. I think people will get hate for the reasons of how they address the problem of what is their business model behind it. The, you know, source is a phenomenal thing. I think it’s very smart tech. However, it comes with the stamp challenges, right? So the problem is that they’re trying to solve a rural problem at an urban cost. That’s where I see the disconnect, right? So that’s why I’ve been very forthcoming in telling you that, look, I’m here to talk in urban areas. I’m going to be on grid. I can really am not the answer to the water problem, but when we’re getting there, so we have to have cost break from it.

Navkaran Singh Bagga:

Yes, the tech is expensive, but the idea is to get it to accessible, as accessible as possible. We generate water at say, give or take 2 Rps a liter, which is say about three US cents, maybe two and a half, three us cents, right? Which is not expensive. It is far lower than what people would do. Even at a capital expenditure cost. We’re trying to keep it as low as possible. So more and more people get access to the spec. In fact, the future I see is where people don’t have to invest in our equipment. They can just use it for water as we generate it, and then kind of pay us for the water.

The costs of Water from Air

Antoine Walter:

What is the typical cost for one liter of bottled water in India say about 30 cents. My Western view would be to say $1 or one Euro, but see, even at 30 cents, it means you are producing 10 times cheaper than bottled water. It’s important to put things in perspective. I was also looking at articles who were calculating how much it would cost to take a truck of water and to truck it somewhere. And the cost is roughly 12 cents per liter. So again, four times more expensive and your technology?

Navkaran Singh Bagga:

No, in India, the cost of tankers is very cheap. A 3000 liter tanker should cost you something like $40 between 40 to $60. So a water is literally cents on the dollar in Indian domes. So from that perspective, they’re very expensive. That’s why we’re not going after traditional water sources. What we’re doing is going after the bottled water or, you know, the five gallon jars, the 20 liter jars, that is something that people are used to spending, you know, between four to five rupees a liter. And that’s where we start making commercial sense for them because we’re half of that. So the whole concept in India, in the markets such in India is challenging because the whole mindset around water is that it needs to be free. People really don’t think that they pay for water. And that’s where it, it kind of becomes challenging.

Navkaran Singh Bagga:

Number one, number two, when we go and pitch into a customer we say, you know what? We have a system to drainage water from it. And they started immediately drawing parallels between us and water purifiers. And we tell them, look, we’re not a certification system with a generation system. We’re literally making water from air. It’s not like you have to feed in a water source. So like I said, the biggest challenge, the air water industry faces, whether it’s a source, whether it’s us, whether it’s, you know, these Israeli water gentleman, it’s about mass education. It’s about telling people that look, this can happen and drawing parallels and making them understand. So customer education is probably the biggest challenge our industry faces.

Radical Transparency as a sign of credibility

Antoine Walter:

I have to say, I love your take because you’re, you’re really saying, here’s why it’s good. Here’s why it’s not good. So really like if you’re, if you’re there and it’s not suited for you, if you’re there, it’s suited for you. I mean, I hate it when you, when there’s a solution, which is too good to be true. Your solution seems to be very realistic. And so really thank you for this honesty and transparency, I really appreciate that. You mentioned something about people wanting water to be free. I have to share you an experience it’s almost 10 years ago. Now it wasn’t a UN water problem in a new Delhi. So it was water for all. And they were bringing water into the slums of Delhi. And I was really impressed. That’s something that really stayed with me about what I heard from those people, telling that they wanted to pay for the torture, of course, a fraction of the cost, because they didn’t have more money to, to give, but they wanted to pay for it. Just to say, look, before here, we had children dying of the problems, linked to bad quality of water. Now you bring quality water that has a value. So it has to have this cost for value. Is it really such problematic that the majority of people still think water shall be free?

Navkaran Singh Bagga:

Water is a sensitive topic? The water is a sensitive topic for the simple reason that whereas somebody wants to pay for it is simply flowing everywhere. So, you know, people don’t really understand the concept of that in particular, the problem with the water industry in general, in the developing world is a bit that people aren’t used to water bills, right? Uh, till about 20 years ago, anybody in India in any city can just might as well dig a board well and kind of get your own water and water source. It’s that concept the difference. Like I said, I keep drawing parallels to the energy industry because that’s what makes more sense to me is that, you know, cause the type solar came in or wind came in, people were used to paying a point unit price power. So it was easy to make that transition.

The hidden cost of Water

Navkaran Singh Bagga:

The challenge today is how do you take something that is free and start saying, you have to pay for the stuff that seems like a huge binge to people. And you know, we’ve had calls. It’s very funny. We keep getting the sales call, the, my sales that took a call from someone in Western India. And she said, so I would like a house, a home machine. So we said, we have a whole machine that has the smallest machine widows, 50 liters per day. And it’s price of one 99,000 rupees, which is roughly about say 1400, 1500 us dollars, which is high. But again, people in India have iPhones that cost more than that. So you, we don’t even look at that talent. The statement that she made broke me down at the same time made me look at this is going to be much tougher job than I thing, which was, she said, how can you charge so much money for a machine that makes water?

Navkaran Singh Bagga:

This is morally not correct. Right. And I got taken back by the statement because we’re being pitched as someone who’s trying to make money off of water, where we’re trying to make money off the technology we developed, right? We’re not here to sell you water. We’re trying to change the way things are done? So the whole question of morality, the question of ethics, I don’t take out ever attached to any other commodity in the world, which are, uh, you know, associated to water. You brought only on the problem, the commodity that probably be addressed to, or attached to the same thing as air, right? So these are the two things that are sacrosanct. They should be for all. And that’s the challenge.

The “moral challenges” of the Water Sector

Antoine Walter:

It’s a surprising comment because, you know, I doubt people really question the morality of bottled water companies. In some cases they do when it’s extreme. But most of the time, you know, it’s just something it’s another good you have in the supermarket and who cares if it’s moral to charge for, because it’s clear you, you pay for what you pay for the transportation of water. You pay for the bottle itself and you consider maybe the water is free, but then it’s really expensive transportation. So yeah, you’re basically marketing the technology, not the water itself. The water is the result. Talking of business. You mentioned you’re a businessman. I saw that you’re bootstrapped. And I was thinking, you know, you have a way to, to present your, your business, which is very clear. It’s not like we can solve every problem. You have a targeted problem, which is usually what investors are looking at. They don’t look at solutions which are like you know, just selling hot air, but something which is targeted. You are on a market where there’s billions of people let’s, let’s make a generality, billions of people lacking access to drinking water. So almost infinite market, almost infinite water resource because you’re tapping into a reservoir which is self filling itself. And you have kind of a clear strategy. How can you be bootstrapped? I mean, do you receive calls from investors twice a week and you decline?

Navkaran Singh Bagga:

Yes and no. So I do receive quite a bit of investor interest. Unfortunately I’ve actually walked away from Trina one step now because of the clear directive of not looking at how this market has to be played out, that the problem with, like you said, it with me is that I’m quite a candid person. I, I call it what it is. And because I keep telling investors that this is a patient skill, right? It’s about equipment setting. It’s about if fly by a portion of the business model, because as a company, we have to evolve as a product, we have to constantly keep evolving and keep trying different hands in different business models. Being bootstrapped. It gives me that freedom. I’m not saying no to investment. And all I’m saying is I think I may be better suited for external investment when I myself have clarity on what the market really is. Currently to be very honest, it’s like a toy I’m playing around with every day, every day, I discover something new about it every day. I want to add a new part or new feature to the product or to the service. And that’s precisely why we’ve tried to keep it as bootstrap as possible and see how it goes!

Water from Air as a B2C solution

Antoine Walter:

To use the, the, the buzz words. I saw that you were entering the B2C market with your, your pod. So basically you’re also going into the homes of people and saying, it’s not only something for communities or for industries. It can also be inside your home. What is your, your, your, your target there

Navkaran Singh Bagga:

Antoine, the Idea is that we have to kind of first get as many adopters as possible, right? So why would the last year we’ve been trying to sell the machines? We’re trying to walk away from that over the next two, three years, because there is a hindrance, there’s a higher cost of capital for people. And people really are not prepared to spend that kind of money yet. So while we are concentrating on the pod, the idea is to go more mass outreach, kind of like take over communities. Apartment complex is a provide a de-centralized drinking water system. So that’s something which we’re looking at. We have received a lot of infrastructure for our board because we’ve added a new twist to the product that your USP is being aware. The only add water machine there for the homes that is kind of a split system where the water generators are of the house.

Navkaran Singh Bagga:

And you have a dispenser inside the kitchen. All our machines are IOT enabled. You get real time data on what’s the humidity, what’s the temperature, what does power to the water meter yesterday and things like that. So we’re giving a lot of lab because customer, and that is something that I actively spend time on because the first challenges I faced was how do I know this works? It made X amount of water yesterday. How do I know that it didn’t make water because the temperature was high or low. So I really tried to build out the tech side of it. So all the last two years, I can take him in spite that all our machines are digital. We don’t have any analog machines. They’re entirely software driven. That’s how we’re evolving as a company. So B2C interest is there, but it’s not like people will be queuing outside the store anytime soon, the kind of book slot. So we like to see how it goes!

Path to Growth for Akvo as an Atmospheric Water Generation Company

Antoine Walter:

Coming back to your growth, even if you you’re bootstrapped. And I’m impressed with that fact, I understand what you’re saying gives you more agility, more freedom to explore the market. I don’t know if that figure is still accurate, but you’re 25 inside AKVO. Is that still the case?

Navkaran Singh Bagga:

Yes!

Antoine Walter:

What is your, your vision of the future of your company? Where are you in five years? I’ve seen that you’ve tripled over the past three years. So in the next five years, you intend to do times five or no, I think this

Navkaran Singh Bagga:

Is going to be pivoting year for us. So I hope that we can teach triple a growth within this financial year and with the change in the business model and now kind of going into over gear more because I’m going to be very aggressive with reaching out to consumers. The idea of the longterm is whether it comes in equipment sale, or whether it comes in water as a service AKVO in the next five years should be at least fulfilling needs of up to at least 10 million liters of water on a daily basis. That is the focus. So I want that at least across the world, wherever we are, we’re generating at least 10 million liters of water on a daily basis. And that’s what we’re going for.

Offering Water from Air as a Service

Antoine Walter:

You just mentioned water as a service. When you, you gave your figure early on of the two rupee per liter, how do you calculate that? It’s the investment costs over an amortizing time, I guess, of 15 years or something like that. And then you, you get this figure?

Navkaran Singh Bagga:

No, our figure is entirely based on the running cost, the power we consume. So in India, on average, the residential power cost is roughly something like eight rupees, a unit of power kilowatt hour, and our machines in its most ideal conditions generate four liters of water for every unit of power. So that’s how we are able to do a piece for you. Well, regarding

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Antoine Walter:

That, the service part, is it something you’re touching today or are you pure supplier of hardware?

Navkaran Singh Bagga:

We were a pure supplier of hardware until the last year where a couple of doing a couple of pilots now, which will completely shift gears to a service-based model. And if it wasn’t for the lockdowns, I’d have a couple of projects up and running by now, but hopefully this coming next quarter, maybe July onwards, we should actively add a couple of more consumers or at least a couple of hundred consumers in India to kind of look at what is this office.

Atmospheric Water Generation in industrial sites (B2B)

Antoine Walter:

I guess there’s a huge market in the, in the industry side of the business, because you have there, these water fountains, which are a service, basically, I, I don’t, I don’t think that industry is actively pay for the fountains. They pay for the fact that there’s always water available. So that could be your water as a service model, but just out of the blue with them. But it’s the first thing I would be seeing for, for you is it’s where you intend to go on the long run?

Navkaran Singh Bagga:

Yeah, the Idea is to kind of move water service to consumer. So like I said, where we’re a drinking water source, right? And wherever there are people there’s always going to be a need for drinking water. It will come with various modes. It could come for residential complexes. It would come for large factories where people have employees with an indicator for water. It could be public places where people can maybe work in, you know, water vending machines. The idea is to give people access to water wherever possible. So like I kind of the, the cost of repeating myself, we are drinking water source, right? Whenever there is a need, our source can fulfill that need. It’s just a question of adaptability and how we as a company are willing to kind of be agile and versatile to meet that need. And that’s what we’re going for

Towards internationalization

Antoine Walter:

Ou mentioned your targets to triple your revenue in the next year. Do you achieve that solely in India or do you have also plans for international expansion?

Navkaran Singh Bagga:

Actually we have machines running in seven countries today. As far as south America, I have a machine, the chili, a couple of machines in the middle east, of course, because that seems to be the lowest hanging fruit. I have machines in. Africa, I have machine in Philippines and India as well. So the idea is to kind of be a global player in the space because wherever we get permitted to be a water source, we like to go in and you know, we’re trying to build up our technology in a manner now where we’re kind of build it up to be modular, to be scalable last year, year and a half, we’ve kind of changed our entire focus on what are we going to be when I first started out, you know, it was the idea that I build a product it’ll make X amount of liters every day and I’d be able to sell it as a price like this machine that makes 50, because this is one that makes a hundred, it’s also Ford. And you’ll see my website stand small things like that, too. But with the new focus of how they’re going with changing our entire focus and being a product based company to a service based company, like I said, so we’re trying to build our backend products that allow us to be scalable to provide that service. So whether you require say 500 liters or 50,000 liters, we should have equipment that can scale up fast, be modular in nature and provide that supply. And that’s what we’re working on right now.

Antoine Walter:

It sounds like a fascinating path and a fascinating plan. Well, I think you delivered on the promise, which I had on the beginning, which was that I really wanted to dive a bit deeper in that a new way to produce drinking water. Navkaran, if it’s fine for you. I propose you to switch to the rapid fire questions.

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Rapid fire questions.

Antoine Walter:

So in that last section, I’ll try to keep the questions short. If you can keep the answers short, it’s cool as well, but you, you, you’re going to notice that I’m always the one that sidetracks people, so don’t worry that’s going to happen. My first question is what is the most exciting project you’ve been working on and why?

Navkaran Singh Bagga:

The most exciting Project has been AKVO for all of my life now. And every day is a new challenge because every day I think of something new to add to it. So I think it’s currently fulfilling to my entire need to not be bored because there is not a single boring day while working on that

Antoine Walter:

Book. If there’s something new every day, what was your latest, crazy ID? This really

Navkaran Singh Bagga:

Crazy idea was to go for a complete distributed, prepaid water distribution system for buildings where people can put in money on an online platform and their wishes will generate X amount of water up to the model money that they have in abundance. And that’s what we’re

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Antoine Walter:

Working on right now. So it’s cool. Crazy, but cool. It’s crazy. What’s your favorite part of your current job? The lack of boredom. There’s a pattern. I noticed

Navkaran Singh Bagga:

That that is the button. That is the core pattern. What

Antoine Walter:

Is the trend to watch out in the water industry now in general? I think

Navkaran Singh Bagga:

The trend of watch out in general is how new versions of old equipment are going to come up and how they’re going to change. Focus on being customer friendly, looking at how people consume water and another trend that’s also going on when we’re looking at alternative water sources. The next big thing to watch out of which I personally believe is to look at water consumption. And that’s what you see. A lot of companies are now getting funded in the water metering space, because that is the next part. It’s not just supply side. It’s also the mindset. And when these two come together, that’s, what’s going to be interesting.

Antoine Walter:

I’m surprised that you don’t mention decentralized as a trend because you, you mentioned it in the discussion, how you are addressing that, that wave, but it’s true.

Navkaran Singh Bagga:

Antoine. I I’ll be very honest, right? I’m hurt. I’m providing a solution, but is my solution, the answer to all of the water problems? No, it isn’t. And it can never be. So while I am a big advocate of decentralized water systems, it’s never going to be just the decentralized water system. It’s going to be a combination of all spirits coming together to kind of reduce the water pressure, the world is currently facing.

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Antoine Walter:

What is the thing you care about the most when you’re working on a new project and what is the one you care? The least the most I

Navkaran Singh Bagga:

Care about is the team. I think as an individual, we can’t achieve anything. It’s when we can bring good people together and give them similar ownership where they believe what they’re working on is as much theirs as it is yours. I think that is something that I liked the most, which I really did better since I’ve been impatient. I think it’s when people can’t see, you know, the same thing that I’m seeing. And if I’m going to convince someone on that, it kind of becomes a disconnect. And that’s something that kind of irritates me a bit.

Antoine Walter:

That’s often the problem. When you think a bit too fast, people have to, to, to catch you as well. I said I was going to be the one side tracking. I’m just coming one step back to your previous answer. You mentioned the booming in metering, which makes me think of what you were mentioning in your Ted talk, that we are eating 3000 something liters of water every day, we just don’t see it. Is it’s one battle. You think to bring that in plain sight, that everybody sees that at the end of the day, how stupid as it sounds, everything is water?

Navkaran Singh Bagga:

Like I said, that’s a problem, right? People never going to look at that aspect of it. The issue is that when we wear everything we do, you know, and everything we’re surrounded by whether it is the steel on that microphone that you have you in that, that processing required amount of water, uh, whether it was the food that you eat. So water is actually something that consumes us, whether it’s for a process, whether it’s for material or whatever it is, the problem is that we’re not getting water conscious in that sense. And I don’t think we ever will to be honest. I don’t think that the meat industry is going to see a revolution because it consumes X amount of water. However, having said that, I will see, we will see more and more processes, uh, becoming more water friendly, a primary example, uh, in that space is hydroponics, right? Uh, hydroponics is something that is water friendly agriculture. So we are going to see these shifts that will change how people see things.

Antoine Walter:

Things. Let’s do questions for you and Afghan. Do you have services to recommend to keep up with the water and wastewater trends?

Navkaran Singh Bagga:

No. I don’t particularly follow any kind of particular source. I keep looking at different topics, different areas until you’re honest. I don’t have that one. Go-To the only go-to I have is that I think skin on Google, but I have a question. I just thanked them. It doesn’t matter where it came from. That’s that’s the kind of information I seek.

Antoine Walter:

Well, Google is a cool source for everyone. So I think that counts. Do you have someone to recommend they should definitely invite on that microphone. I think,

Navkaran Singh Bagga:

Like I said, I was talking about the water heater in space. This company based out of Chennai in India called we got, I’d probably introduce you to them is someone I know. And they’re doing the revenue. She worked in the water matrix.

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Antoine Walter:

Well, it was a pleasure to have you on, on the microphone. Where can I redirect people? If they want to follow up with what you’re doing with your company, with yourself, what’s the best place.

Navkaran Singh Bagga:

Linkedin is somewhere. We are trying to put in a regular post, but my post off later become less water-related and more personal related. But you can obviously go to the actual LinkedIn page or visit us on atmosphere.com, which is our

Antoine Walter:

Website. Like always the links to everything you just mentioned are in the, in the food notes of that episode. If you’re listening to that and I’ve gone, it’s been a pleasure. I hope I’ll have the chance to chat with you in the future when you reach your times three targets of next year and then the sky’s the limit. No, thank

Navkaran Singh Bagga:

You, Anton. It’s been a pleasure for me to be, I really like talking about this and I’m more of a Mike hog, right? So if I got a chance to talk, I don’t shut up. And I always liked that job.

Other Episodes:

FREDsense: Revolutionizing Water Quality Monitoring with Biosensor Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 7 May 2025

Swirltex: Revolutionizing Wastewater Treatment with Bubbly Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 30 April 2025

Blue Foot Membranes: The Next Evolution in Water Filtration

By Antoine Walter | 16 April 2025

Echo River Capital: Pioneering the Future of Water Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 3 April 2025

1001 Fontaines: Engineering Sustainable Water Access Through Social Entrepreneurship

By Antoine Walter | 22 March 2025

Amazon’s Water Footprint: Tech Giant’s Quest for Water Sustainability

By Antoine Walter | 19 March 2025

Turing: The AI Revolution Quenching the Water Industry’s Thirst for Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 26 February 2025

Altillion: Pioneering Digital Intelligence for Water Asset Management

By Antoine Walter | 6 February 2025

Flocean: Pioneering Ocean-Based Water Solutions

By Antoine Walter | 15 January 2025

Botanical Water Technologies: Harvesting Liquid Gold from Plants

By Antoine Walter | 4 December 2024

The post Is Water from Air Actually a Scam or a Gift? You’ll Be Astounded! appeared first on (don't) Waste Water.

BlueTech Research analyzes innovative water technologies to transform your company. 

Paul is also the executive producer & co-director of Netflix’s “Brave Blue World.” 

… and as he noticed, that he still had some time on Saturdays, he just completed a Ph.D. on the Dynamics of Water Innovation! 

This episode is part of my series on (successful) Water Entrepreneurship – check it out!

What we covered:

How long and what stages it takes for Water Innovations to exit the no man’s land and cross the chasm 

What are the milestones you shall identify on your path to guide you on the quest to mass market 

Three Key Fields that attract 73% of investments to jumpstart your water venture 

Key Hints on the best ingredients to get your water innovations adopted by the early and late majorities 

How to get Netflix, Liam Neeson, Matt Damon, and Jayden Smith to root for a Water Project 

How claiming to bring innovation to life is as broad as saying you want to get a gold medal in the Olympics – you need to know first in which sport you’re competing

How “Done” is better than “Perfect” and how “good enough” approaches may solve big hurdles in the Water Sector 

How and Why there’s more money spent in California every year on bottled water than on utility water 

How everything looks like a nail if you only have a hammer – aka we might need new paradigms to solve the upcoming water challenges

… and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨  

How Water Innovation may Create Unicorns

Teaser:

Resources:

Send your warm regards to Paul on LinkedIn

Visit BlueTech Research’s Website

Read Paul’s Ph.D. Thesis on the Dynamics of Water Innovation

Get to know more about the Brave Blue World Documentary

is on Linkedin

Antoine Walter on LinkedIn

Infographic: Water Innovation

Full Transcript:

These are computer generated, so expect some typos

Antoine Walter:

Hi Paul, welcome to the show.

Paul O’Callaghan:

My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Antoine Walter:

Well, actually we have a very packed schedule, so I’m going to start to very, very swiftly with the, with the postcard and you are sitting in cork Ireland right now. What can you tell me about cork that I would ignore by now?

Paul O’Callaghan:

Well, it’s very beautiful. It’s probably, as people imagine on a postcard it’s green, it gets plenty of rainfall. It gets probably more sunshine than people might think we’re near the ocean. So what’s become very popular here during COVID-19 is people are actually swimming a lot in the ocean on your own. Believe it or not even in the winter now. So yeah, it’s an exceptionally lovely part of the world to live in. We’re intimately connected, being on an island with the environment around us, oceans and rain, and it kind of encapsulates a lot of my interests in life. I can do snorkeling and swimming and kayaking and all that.

BlueTech Research in a Nutshell

Antoine Walter:

Okay. So now you’re really trying to make me jealous and that worked. That’s a good start, actually, Paul, there’s a ton of reason why I should have invited you. And if you have three more hours, we can cover all these reasons, but we have to be a bit focused. Let’s start with everything we won’t be addressing today. And the first thing we won’t be addressing today is actually your company, BlueTech. What can you tell me about BlueTech? What is the gap in the market that you were aiming to close with? Bluetech

Paul O’Callaghan:

No, I’ve been in the sector for about 20 plus years now. And you know, when I was younger and I was working in different parts of the industry, always noticed that everyone was so enthusiastic and water. They all wanted to make a difference. There was on Venters entrepreneurs, investors, and yet many of those startup companies failed because they were chasing the wrong market, looking at the wrong opportunity and they weren’t having an impact through their work. And I thought that’s, that’s a pity because these water challenges are, are huge. And there’s only a certain amount of human capital that we have to make a difference. And if we could do one thing with BlueTech and it’s to help make people more efficient, to save them a year, to save them, you know, wasting funding on pursuing an opportunity, that’s not going to be profitable or created value for them.

Paul O’Callaghan:

That would be a good service. I think I view us like a light bulb. You know, if you’ve ever tried to look for something in the dark and you’re trying to look for your car keys, you can’t find them, but the minute you turn on the light bulb, it’s really obvious, you know, they’re right there, but no amount of fumbling was ever going to find them. And I think what we do is we bring water technology experts and we apply the science to the study of trying to understand truly does a technology solve a problem in the water sector, if so, what, and to help companies make good decisions in a nutshell. That’s it.

Antoine Walter:

So when you say that the company shall make better decisions, is it any kind of company that you support is it’s more of the new entrants into the market, the small players that want to be big players, or what’s your typical company you help?

Paul O’Callaghan:

It all started with working with the smaller companies, working with startup companies, because I realized I could make a real difference to them. And that broadened out to working with investors, venture capital investors who are becoming very interested in water. Ultimately the larger companies realized that they needed to be innovating and they were curious to know, where should we invest? Who should we partner with? And nowadays we actually work with a lot of end users like water utilities, large corporations and food and Bev and tech and other areas where they’re trying to figure out how do they get to zero water impact in the next 10 years? Like what solutions should they be using in their factories or their organizations? So it’s really right across the value chain from research institutes, investors, entrepreneurs to larger water technology firms. And as I say now, increasingly the people who are trying to solve problems in their own businesses as well.

Brave Blue World: Joining forces with Netflix, Liam Neeson, Matt Damon and Jayden Smith

Antoine Walter:

Well, very interesting that gives us kind of an understanding for the deep dive we’re going to have about this innovation. But right before we go into the deep dive, actually probably the prominent reason why I should have invited you for your, your, your most recent news as this incredible brave blue word documentary that was airing on, on Netflix. I mean, it started some month ago and I rewatched it as I was explaining you just before we, we hit the record button, I was rewatching it with my daughter just to just yesterday evening. So how’d you get Liam Neeson, Matt Damon and Jayden Smith and Netflix across the same table to build a documentary that since then broadcast it everywhere, translated into 29 languages about water. What’s the trick. How do you manage that?

Paul O’Callaghan:

I think the appetite was out there that people wanted to move on from the doom and gloom narrative about water and the apocalyptic tales that we hear and people were really ready to tell a different story, because those of us who are in the sector, we know that there is a different story here. There are solutions to these challenges of our solutions to these problems. And you know, there’s a few times in your life when you start something and you realize that the universe is almost willing to project into existence, it felt from the get go that, you know, I was pushing on an open door that things were conspiring to help make the project happen. And I think it was just that appetite that people like Matt Damon, who really cares very passionately about water and has spent a lot of his career, you know, when he’s not working in the film industry, focusing on this same with Jayden Smith, young man who was very impassioned to want to make a difference in other parts of the world, but also back in closer to home. And for Liam Neeson, it just really resonated with him. He likes the characters in the story. He liked people like Beth, who he could relate to and thought, God, this is a story we have to tell. So I think it starts by asking, okay, we knocked on doors and we persevered. But I think also the fact that we were telling positive stories and ones that were about more solutions and what we call the lighthouses in the film, I think that made a difference.

Antoine Walter:

Well, actually the positive story aspect is something very, very important. I mean, that’s the reason why I watched it with my daughter because you know, now I’m talking about myself, but some years ago I brought my sister at the time to the movie and it was like a documentary about planet earth something. And the first image is a, you know, a polar beer. And the first thing that the voice over is saying is, you know, that polar beer is going to die. And it’s like, no, no, wait, wait, I have to explain you. It’s a documentary. All good. Everything. What I loved about brave blue world is it’s not about that. It’s not ignoring the problem. It’s saying, yeah, there is a problem staging the problem. But the problem is in the first five minutes of the movie, and then it’s about the solutions. And that is just, I mean, thanks a lot for that. It’s bringing the positive, really positive light on that challenging topic. So yeah, as I said, I could spend two hours on brave blue world, but in all of that, you still managed to pack in something that people never achieve in a lifetime. You were making a PhD. How in the world do you manage to pack that into your agenda. Well,

Paul O’Callaghan:

You know, everything helps everything else, I guess. I mean, the first of all, the PhD was building on the 10 years of research of BlueTech. So we had a lot of information, a lot of data. I had really good collaborators, both in BlueTech and also in my promoter professor Kay spokesman from wet SIS Lakshmi Adapa, who is a core author on many of the papers that collaborative field. And there were times when I also got tremendous support from people within the water industry, founders of companies like Zenon, Trojan, UV people like Hank Vander, 900 Benedick James at Barnard. And at times it felt like people were willing it into existence. There was, again, it was, people wanted to understand this process. They wanted to know how long does it take, what are the key things that help the technology move along? So a lot of these projects, you find that they’re, they’re not about me so much as they’re about bringing people together with a common goal. But yeah, there were many Saturday mornings when I’d leave, I’d get up early and I tend to offer a cup of coffee. I’m in a cafe nearby and I’d worked for maybe two or three hours on the PhD and then I’d come back and it kinda came together. It took time. It happened over four years. So it wasn’t overnight.

The Dynamics of Water Innovation – Paul’s Ph.D. Thesis

Antoine Walter:

When you, you mentioned BlueTech that, that helps you, that brings data into your PhD. And actually your PhD opens with this staggering statistics of this 9% of innovation across a 300 sample, 9% of innovation in the water sector that make it through, I mean, all the stages and that come to life, which is a positive way to look at it. And now if you look at the negative way, that means 91% of innovation is just, just die. And before focusing into the water sector, is that any different from innovation in general, is the water sector like a special beast or is it really normal to see this 91% of clutter?

Paul O’Callaghan:

Somehow, the venture capital investment community would typically anticipate that 10% of their companies might, might make it, they might succeed. So the success rate is relatively in keeping with that trend. The surprising thing about the water sector is the number that they don’t disappear or fail, and they don’t really make it. They kind of live in this kind of no man’s land, this gray area, gray zone, where they’re neither very successful and yet they kind of hang on for a decade or two decades. So that’s probably what’s most unique. I think about the water sector compared to other industries.

Is Venture Capital compatible with Water Innovation?

Antoine Walter:

But if we compare it to, to other industries, I mean, in the venture capitalist word, when one company succeeds, it makes a Uber or a Netflix or something really, really incredibly big. And, you know, I had Kimberly Baker on, on that microphone from the elemental excelerator. And what she was sharing is that, yes, they didn’t have this absolutely big company out of the accelerator, but still 90% of those companies survived. So if I get it right with what you’re saying, which makes this big difference, it’s that in the water sector, you don’t have spectacular successes, but still you have a lot of these in-between where you don’t know if it’s a success of failure. It’s a gray zone.

Paul O’Callaghan:

That was one of the things that surprised me actually, was that when we tried to quantify the level of impact, that level of success, no company became a unicorn. There were certain technologies that became what you could call it, a unicorn market where the market reached a billion dollars, but some companies that would be deemed to be successful in terms of the approving, the technology that demonstrated they’ve scaled it up, they don’t achieve that level one impact. They don’t create unicorn markets. So that was surprising actually as a finding for me even. Yeah, I think it’s a combination of, it’s a very diverse sector. It’s made up of hundreds of thousands of different plants all over the world, different sizes and scales. And one of the ideas that we brought to bear and the thesis is that it’s a bit like genetic diversity. It gets one of the positives about COVID-19 I guess, or anything like that is that we’re resilient because we have diversity in our population. Water can be resilient to change because of that fragmented nature of it’s almost like a buffer against disruption.

Antoine Walter:

So you mean that the, the water ecosystem of companies is looking exactly like the water itself. It is incredibly fragmented. So you don’t have this Uber or Coca-Cola of water, but that makes it also incredibly resilient in the age of COVID. We experienced that.

Paul O’Callaghan:

Yes, and we have been a very resilient sector throughout this last year or two now.

Water Innovation and R&D Funding

Antoine Walter:

Well, another thing that, that was really striking for me, even if I’m in that water sector now for almost a decade, is that your study is recalling that there’s 35% of the water companies in the Netherlands, which invest into R&D. I was just thinking that was a given that everybody would be just investing in R and D, but apparently not. And you’re also making this comparison between the big companies, their turnover and what they invest actually in water. And it’s a very low percentage. I had a couple of ones. I mean, you also explain why it’s a low percentage, so it’s not really to blame them, but just to put that in context, you’re saying that SUEZ is spending around 0.4% of their turnover in R&D for Xylem it’s 4%, for Evoqua it’s 1.5% for Kurita it’s 2.3%

Antoine Walter:

And, you know, I recalled my SUEZ years where I was working for a subsidiary of Suez and our CEO at the time Eric Dehouck was targeting 8%. He said he wanted to invest 8%. That never happened. What I’m wondering when I see all those numbers is what shall we understand there is the, is it that there is no, no investment or not sufficient investment into R&D? Or is it because the ROI of R&D is not sufficient, that it doesn’t make sense for those big groups to invest heavily in R&D? Well, you

Paul O’Callaghan:

Know, the figures you’re correct. Antwan would vary between, you know, two, three, 4%. It’s that type of number. Generally speaking, we’ve heard that from other companies subsequently after we publish this in conversations, other companies would say, yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s exactly where we are as well. So it seems very consistent. I don’t think the number itself is a major issue or something that we need to be concerned about. I think it’s an acceptable level of investment for a very large firm, such as Suez. For example, the bit that we might want to be concerned about, the message we might want to focus on is how much of that 2-4% results in growth to the business or a competitive advantage or value creation, because that’s, what’s going to sustain that. And if companies see that return on 2-4%, well, then they might say, whoa, why don’t we invest 5 or 6% or 7 or 8%?

Paul O’Callaghan:

And it’s that rate of success. And it’s where the innovation is focused. So, you know, existing, larger firms are quite good at continued improvement. That’s often called sustaining innovation. It takes what we have, and it makes it a little bit better, a little bit like the way an automobile or a car becomes a little bit more fuel efficient, you know, every year compared to the ones that we drove in the 1970s or so then another how you remember anyway, in the 1980s you wouldn’t, but to the ones that we have today. And I think there’s other types of innovation, which is radical, you know, it’s, it’s completely new and we need to invest in that as well. So it’s all about what type of innovation are you investing in? What type of research are you doing? And trying to really make sure that, you know, the people in the R&D center, that when they go to their corporate managers and they report on the results that everyone is happy and pleased, and there’s no surprises. So if it’s going to take seven or eight years, well, then it’s better that everyone understands that it’s going to take seven or eight years.

“Disruptive Innovation” is an overused buzzword

Antoine Walter:

Your distinction is very interesting because in your paper, you, you discuss how the word disrupting is overused. And and I, I mentioned I mean, I noticed here that you, you say you’re radical, which is a bit more precise due to what it is. What you’re saying here is that if we see the innovation, like, like a funnel where we feed all this innovation at the top and it bubbles down, we said with the first statistics that 91% of the innovation would stay somewhere in the funnel. But if you work on the bottleneck and if you increase the conversion, more innovation is going to make impact, which is in turn, going to push companies to be a bit more risky and risk taking and investing into, into that funnel. Because the ROI again is going to be a bit better to understand your right here?

Paul O’Callaghan:

Yes, look anything that makes this process more efficient is good. And we begin by thinking that we want to innovate, but then we need to figure out what we really mean. Do we want to make something that’s there better? Do we want to solve an unmet need? Do we want to solve a problem? That’s not even solved today. Right? How will you, do you provide water to people who only earn $8 a day? How can you do that for 10% of their income? I believe it’s possible. I just believe that it hasn’t been figured out just yet, or at least if it has, it’s been figured out in some parts of the world, but it hasn’t been scaled up yet. And if we really try and understand at the early stages, what types of technologies we’re working on, then we can work out the best strategy.

Paul O’Callaghan:

It’s a little bit like saying I want to get a gold medal in the Olympics. Okay. So I want innovation succeed is like, I want to get a gold medal in the Olympics, but what event are you in the rowing event? Are you in the high jump event? Are you in the marathon? Because depending on what events you want to go for, you might want to train for endurance. You might need certain skill sets. And I think if we break it down and say, I am investing in radical functionality, I need a crisis driven innovation. That’s going to require radical functionality. And I need very good leadership as well. Or another firm might say, my innovation is discontinuous. It’s like an electric car. It is a completely different value chain. I’m going to go for ceramic membranes, not polymeric membranes. This is discontinuous. So then you need a different factory, different manufacturing process, different technical standards. And, and you don’t need a crisis necessarily as long as you’re able to be a value-driven innovation. So just understanding that a bit better at the very start allows you to put the right team in place and have the right strategy in place and the right understanding of your risk profile and your timeline.

Value-Driven Vs. Crisis-Driven Water Innovation

Antoine Walter:

You mentioning though, two different terms, this value driven innovation and this crisis or need driven. And was you show in your research is that there is one of these two types, which is incredibly more efficient, which drives much better results and it’s the Crisis or Need driven. Why is that?

Paul O’Callaghan:

Yes, you’re correct Antoine! My God, you could almost defend my thesis for me with the sounds of it. It moves at literally half the speed that the value driven innovation does through the adoption cycle. It can half the timeline. And we saw that very clearly with the adoption of ultrafiltration membranes in the early 1990s, the outbreak of cryptosporidium in places like Milwaukee and the UK drove rapid regulation of the need to deal with cryptosporidium. And that drove rapid adoption of ultrafiltration membranes and drinking water treatment. If you hadn’t had that cryptosporidium outbreak in 1987 in Milwaukee, you would not have seen that level of uptake. And we see similar things with, for example, PFAS at the moment, if PFAS get regulated that will become, you could call it a crisis driven market or in these driven market could be water scarcity, where people are suffering from droughts, and that creates a need.

Paul O’Callaghan:

And that accelerates things like a war does it accelerates adoption. Now it’s a bit more risky because you need to make sure that there is a crisis, right? That there is regulation. And we’ve seen people who think there’s a crisis that end up waiting and waiting and waiting. And then the crisis never comes. People who think that, you know, they can create, you know, that sludge won’t be applied to land or that ballast water treatment would be regulated quickly. And of course it was delayed. And so that’s why those things move quicker, but you have to be certain that the conditions are right.

Antoine Walter:

It’s very interesting because, you know, it’s provides me some, some memories, you know at the times I was with Suez, we were heavily betting on that, ballast water treatments. And when I saw that example in, in your paper, I was like, Hey, I know that story, actually, what you shared about the ultrafiltration and cryptosporidium was told us on that microphone by Graeme Pearce, who was also one of your interview is in your, in your paper. And that advise me in the conclusion of our discussion today to invite you on that microphone. So for the ones that’s want the full length story, just check the episode that I did with Graham. I’m going to put the link in there in the notes of that episode.

Paul O’Callaghan:

I would totally recommend that too!

WaTA – Understanding how Water Innovations get accepted

Antoine Walter:

You mentioned this adoption as being something, which is something we should look at, because if we understand the adoption curve, well probably we can understand innovation, and you also even say, we might be able to predict what is going to stick and what is not going to stick. And you have a very interesting concept, which is this, this WATA, water technology adoption, and that has several phases. And it’s kind of your personal take at this curve from, from Moore about the, this crossing, the chasm. Can you take us through the steps? Just that we, we are all on the same page when it comes to this water technology adoption?

Paul O’Callaghan:

Sure, so like this model is used in all sorts of different areas and has been for a long time. You can think about people who use technologies as the innovators, which are not 2.5% of the market would be innovators. They want to try these things very, very early on, even if it’s not perfect. And then we have the early adopters, they come after the innovators, and that represents about 13.5% of the tool to market. And these are folks that when they’re interested, they’re usually quite innovative. They like trying and learning about new things, but it’s got to be proven to some extent. And then you move into the early and late majority. And that’s where the not 68% of the market would lie in the water sector, typically for us to get our technologies into the innovator section. And I think of when I graduated from my master’s degree in 1996, 97, the membrane bioreactor was at that stage.

Paul O’Callaghan:

Okay. So it was being piloted and it was being demonstrated at full scale. I actually ran one for Pfizer pharmaceuticals. It was a Zenon and Kubota head-to-head race to MBRs. And only one would make it in that instance, I think it was Zenon that made it, but the point was it was in the innovator section. And that can take about five to eight years. So by the time you’ve completed all of your pilot testing and gotten maybe three full scale demonstration facilities up and running, that can take five to eight years. Typically that gives you a sense for that. And then when you move through the early adopters, these are the people that are going to buy the first 25 or 30 of your reference plants. So this is, it’s not yet called for an, a tender document. It’s not being specified by consulting engineers.

Paul O’Callaghan:

There are probably only two or three companies that maybe even offering the technology that can take another six to eight years for it to move through that section. And then after that period of time has passed, no you’re into the early and or the early majority and the late majority. And you can stay in that sector for that segment for about 12 to 16 years. So that gives you a sense that it moves at a certain pace. And when you’re very busy with your piloting, and you’re testing that to take a certain amount of time, then you’re setting the first units. That’s another period of time. And then after that, you’re in this section where, oh, people are actually calling for this, it’s becoming, it’s at trade shows, it’s a conferences. It becomes easier.

It takes 30-40 Years for a Water Innovation to get adopted

Antoine Walter:

So that full process. If we put that in perspective means 30, 40 years for the adoption, the adoption of technology.

Paul O’Callaghan:

Well, it’s entirely cycle, but from the point where you take an idea out of a Laboratory and you begin your first pilot to the point where it now is right in the middle of the market, there were, you know, a hundred or more plants out there. And the market’s going really rapidly. That whole timeframe that can take about 12 to 16 years. So if you’re a startup company today in 2021, and you just did your first pilot, you would expect that maybe in 12 to 16 years time, this would be a mainstream market opportunity. That’s growing very, very rapidly. And it might move a little bit faster if it’s a crisis driven or a needs driven market, but those are the average timelines.

Antoine Walter:

So you were saying that basically in the water sector, it’s not possible to see a, like an iPhone. It comes on the market and by iPhone three, it is almost adopted by everyone, not as the iPhone itself, but as a smartphone where I’m heading here is that, you know, I think it was very reassuring to me to read that in your paper, because I recall when I was working on pilots and I was frustrated as a young professional to see that the pilot was successful and still the markets wouldn’t just take it and build it everywhere. And it wasn’t understanding that, you know, it was like, come on, it’s now six months, six months as we prove it’s working. And what you were saying is that what you’re looking at is a timeline of 10, eight years, six years, if it’s incredibly successful in an answering to crisis, but still not six months.

Paul O’Callaghan:

Exactly. Yeah. And I think one of the strongest bits of feedback that I’ve had from people who read the thesis is, well, this is for the first time we can know, you know, go in front of the company and, you know, the, the management team in our company. And we can say, Hey, look, this isn’t just us. This is objectively based on a lot of data over a long period of time. This is quite typical. And yes, there are ways you can have the time sometimes. And there are certain strategies that work in certain cases, but there are other limiting factors like the procurement cycle. It takes quite a while to tender a job and to procure a job, to construct a project itself that can take quite a bit of time in terms of design phase building. So it allows us to be more real, but you’re correct. The iPhone, you don’t see things like the iPhone. Although I think even the, iPhone probably was being developed for quite a period of time before we sell it in the shops. You know,

A dense jungle of Water Innovations

Antoine Walter:

Maybe you as, as BlueTech, you have a view of what’s happening in these very early stages, but us, the usual, what a professionals, we don’t know these early stages. So we see something when actually it is crossing this chasm. So maybe we see then timelines, which are not as real as they really are. And what struck me as well in your paper is that when I had this discussion with Graham, he was telling me the story of, of MBRs and how it was quite hard to bring them on the market and how Zenon was the lone ranger fighting in the desert. And when I was preparing, you know the, the sentences of that discussion, I was reading some older papers and it was really struck to see that MBRs were commercial long before they came into, into the books. And I was thinking that must be an exception. It cannot be. I mean, if something is commercial and out there, for sure it’s in the book. And when I read in your thesis that no, actually the university papers and the, and the official books are the laggards. They always come last. How’s that even possible?

Paul O’Callaghan:

Well, similarly to you. I have met caffeinated on the shows behind me here, which is your classic design engineering manual. A part of it is down to the fact that technology development is a race. It’s a race against funding running out against patents, expiring against competition, entering the market. And it’s a race against commoditization. So when an MBR was first developed, there are only a few companies that had the know-how, the expertise, the secrets, to know how to do that. And they had proprietary technologies, which were controlled and patented. Nowadays, you know, pretty much anybody with the right designing expertise could design an MBR. You can purchase the membranes and you can design an MBR. So when it gets the point, when the knowledge is so widely spread, and the art is well known within the engineering community, at that point, the race is over. The technology, race needs, innovators, entrepreneurs, typically who build companies around being able to be the only people or a few people who can offer that technology.

Paul O’Callaghan:

And eventually it becomes more and more mainstream. So even with the iPhone, you can buy a smartphone nowadays from so many different people, but there was a period of time when the rural, you smaller number of companies that provided a smartphone with, you know, with touch screen phone. And that’s the reason why it takes time to get into the engineering books. And a great example at the moment would be Nereda is a proprietary, granular activated sludge technology. And there are only a handful of other companies out there, like indents that provide granular sludge technologies. So for know how to do that, how to control the process is not widely known. It is being decoded and engineering firms, for example, Black and Veatch, and others are doing a fantastic job of helping to understand the principles. But I think it’s natural and will be expected that, that the textbook in many ways, by the time it gets into the textbook, the companies who are going to really make it big, probably already have made it bigger or as they failed.

Universities, Schools and Books are laggards when it comes to Water Innovation

Antoine Walter:

It makes a lot of sense when explained in that way. I still believe that’s a bit sad. You know, you’re, you have this new generation of people that are trained to a technology, which is not the technology of today, which is the technology of yesterday. And when I say yesterday, it’s a decade ago or 15 years ago, which might be a problem because you’re also showing that when people understand the innovation, it gets much faster for it to be adopted. And I was reading a good example of that in the book. I can’t remember the author, but they won the Nobel prize for nudge. They were explaining that when you are choosing your, your ice cream flavor, you can have a choice between 10 or 15 different flavors. It doesn’t matter because you know, all of the flavors. So you’re able to make a good choice.

Antoine Walter:

But if you are confronted to even just two choices and you don’t understand whether the one nor the other, well, you can only make a bad choice because you don’t have all the information. So if you don’t have the right information, you cannot make the right choice. You stay with the inertia with the status quo, and you don’t go for the risky one for the innovation. One is like a double problem. On one end, we don’t teach innovation at the right pace so that the new guys that come bring some fresh blood and some fresh ideas to the market. And on the other end, we know that there’s this silver wave of people very experienced, which are leaving that market. So shouldn’t that make us pessimistic about the future – I’m really playing the devil’s advocate because I know you’re the, the positive guy.

Paul O’Callaghan:

Well, look, I think the next generation of water professions and already, we all know that it’s about continual learning now. We all know that our knowledge is outdated so fast, these days, that once we leave university, it’s not like ‘that’s it’. And therefore it’s the skills you learn about biotechnology, about material science, about fluid dynamics, about engineering, whatever those principles are, you apply them to try, to understand these newer technologies. And the peer reviewed literature is fantastic because it keeps you current even more current. Again, our IDB, our papers that are presented at conferences, which we at BlueTech would go to quite a lot, because that’s where you get the real up-to-date knowledge. So if you go to something like Singapore water week or WEFTEC or something like this, the papers there are the latest. And as long as you can apply critical thoughts based on your science and engineering disciplines, to understand how does this work employee, then you can stay current and you can, you’re never boxed into yesterday’s solutions, as long as you have. We need the science and engineering, but we can apply it to the study of any of these emerging technologies.

The more you understand a Water Technology, the faster you adopt it

Antoine Walter:

Let me take two examples here to try to, to understand that that the first example is the one you just shared about Nereda. I mean, if you understand activated sludge, you understand that what Nereda is is adding to that. So it’s like sustaining innovation to stay with. I mean, very, very interesting and innovative one, but still sustaining innovation. And if I take on the other end, another example, which comes from brave blue world, actually, which is aquaporin. Aquaporin, I listened to one hour of interview of their, their technical director with Abdelhakim El Fadil. And I listened to that interview twice, and I’m not sure I understood it. Then I saw them in Brave Blue World and still I get, I get it, but I don’t really understand it. So I would see, you know, if I was to predict, even if they are both amazing technologies, the uptake of the one shall be much faster than the other. Is that a right way to understand that? Well, I think

Paul O’Callaghan:

Increasingly the water sector is becoming more multidisciplinary, you know, 30 or 40 years ago, that textbook, that I mentioned was a textbook for people who studied civil and environmental engineering. These days, we don’t just need civil and environmental engineers. We need those plus data scientists, people who have expertise in computer algorithms and sensors and biotechnology, and it’s that cross collaboration of solutions. So within aquaporin, it is very different because it’s taking a protein and trying to stabilize that protein in a membrane that can then function in a different application, could be forward osmosis, for example. So you’re correct. Nereda is easier to understand and easier to apply. Things like bio-electrical chemical systems, or even, you know, satellite-based leak detection, things like this are coming from different disciplines, but I think that’s where probably the exciting opportunities are. And indeed I would add business model innovation and financial innovation to that as well.

Innovation in the Water Industry involves rethinking Business Models

Antoine Walter:

It’s interesting because what you share reflects on thoughts that many of my previous guests have shared here. I mean, Gaetane Suzenet made about 15 minutes around how you can innovate on business models and how we shall innovate on business models. And coming back to my discussion with Graham Pearce, I remember him sharing that full story of membranes. And it was like, you know, it’s very surprising to me because back in my Suez years, I was working with Aquasource and Aquasource is like the French membrane by on a year. So maybe not that famous outside of France, but the other way round, this is true as well. When you’re in France, you don’t know that much, that there’s anyone else than Aquasource. Nowadays it’s no longer true, but at the time it was really Aquasource. And it was like, I don’t know that story.

Antoine Walter:

I don’t know this Zenon, Kalsep all of those guys developing membranes because to me the one developing membranes was Aquasource. So, you know, I was just thinking of this snowflake effect. I’m a special snowflake. Everyone is a special snowflake. So it can come with your thing, which is proven with thousands of plants in the UK, come on, it’s not France and France is specific. So it’s not going to work in France. Do you think this kind of village thinking is also something which still comes in the way of innovation in the water sector?

Paul O’Callaghan:

You do see that phenomenon quite a bit where it’s proven, but it’s not proven here. You know, it worked in your bowl, but the wastewater might be different over here. And then you see the same thing playing out in the United States itself, where, you know, it’s working in California, but you know, it might not work in Missouri and it’s going to be piloted there. And, you know, to get around that various things have been tried. They came up with what was called the 10 states standard at one point in time to try and have something that was widely recognized that people could accept environmental technology verification has been tried. There are differences in nuances, in different types of water, drinking, water sources, and wastewater. So there is an element of that. You do need to understand the local context and things do need to be piloted, particularly in the industrial context where industrial applications do tend to be quite diverse, even more so than municipal wastewater, where it might be just temperature and strength to the key variables.

Paul O’Callaghan:

It is an issue. I think, sharing data and allowing people to realize ‘Hey, you know, this has actually happened. And you know, there is like a hundred plants out there already.’ That type of information gives confidence for us collectively to understand that this is a real technology. Now it’s not just being piloted and it’s not a bad thing that it’s been developed in France and separately. We do see that sometimes you get simultaneous development of technologies in Japan, for example, and the same technology might be being developed in the United States. And, and that’s good, but sometimes they only make it in one place and they never make their way out beyond that one application, which is also quite interesting when you see something that is hugely successful in one part of the world, but it doesn’t seem to manage, to break through, into other parts of the world.

Does Water Innovation tick at a particular pace in Japan?

Antoine Walter:

You mentioned Japan and Japan comes back quite a lot in your business because quite often all these technologies seem to have like a first life in Japan. And then one decade later, they go out in the world. And I was wondering, is there anything different in Japan compared to, to other countries? Or is it like, you know, there’s the water world and everything is exactly the same wherever you are.

Paul O’Callaghan:

Japan has a few unique things that characterize it. There’s an emphasis on quality above just about anything else, Japan. I think anyone that knows a little bit about the country and its culture would, would know that. And I think when they looked at ceramic membranes, now there’s a broader story about why ceramic membranes were adopted in Japan. It relates back to a semiconductor manufacturer that they were looking for an alternative outlet for ceramics and water provided one. But the point was they were willing to pay a premium for a superior technology that would last longer. It would outlast polymeric membranes and that willingness to pay the premium for that quality was what drove the rapid adoption of ceramics in Japan. Over time of course, once you can get that adopted the high-end of the market, what you generally, the pattern you see is that manufacturing scales up adoption goes up the expertise. And then hopefully over time you get that reduction in cost and maybe more widespread adoption of the technology.

Antoine Walter:

But this Japan dichotomy was especially striking for me because I had interviewed BioCastle, which is an Israeli startup, and they are in encapsulating nature. And it was the first time ever that I crossed this technology. So I wouldn’t say I’m a laggard and probably a water sector average. Let’s say. So I never crossed this technology to meet was new. It was fascinating. And I was really happy to have Ofir Menashe and Gabi Wolkinson on that Microphone explaining all of that. And then I read your cheeses and to see, yeah, that’s something which was around in Japan for like 25 years. It hasn’t made it through a unicorn level yet, but still is making good, slow progress. And I was like, how can it be? It’s like, you know, other ecosystem, which I was totally unaware of. Maybe I’m the one which is not reading sufficiently,uscientific publications, but still, how can you teach the markets about innovation? And is it something that makes sense to even target to teach the full market about it, or shall you really go targeted at some, some special places?

Paul O’Callaghan:

That example with BioCastle is an interesting one. There are companies like Microvi biotechnologies that are still active in that area, lend to cats, check companies. Similarly doing bio encapsulation has subsequently been acquired by another company. That technology area also originated in other areas of cosmetics. For example, medicinal applications. It’s very specific. The know-how is quite specialized as to how to encapsulate these organisms. In that one example, you’re correct though, that for the vast majority of people within the water industry, these are things which are on the fringes. They’re not something that people are going to happen upon day to day regularly, and they don’t need to. These things are for the innovators and the early adopters to begin with. That’s just how this works. And eventually once they’ve proven that technology, when supply costs 11 over plants up and running, then we will see it occurring more widely.

Paul O’Callaghan:

There will be more published papers on it and it would be adopted. So it’s always a small group at the fringes and at the margins that are going to be aware of and looking for these technologies, the job for BioCastle is to find those people, you know, because they need them. They don’t need, you know, a thousand customers right now. They need 10 customers right now. And they also need to figure out what is the most pressing challenge that they can solve with encapsulation? Is it micro pollutant removal? Is it nitrifiers and cold weather when the temperatures are at, or is it stability? What is that thing that they need to solve? So, and then they’ll focus in on a very small percentage and then eventually we’ll all know about it.

How to find early adopters for your Water Innovation?

Antoine Walter:

How do you find those early adopters?

Paul O’Callaghan:

The early adopter, someone once told me, it’s a person. It’s not a utility. It’s not a corporation. It’s an individual within that group. So how do you find them? Well, they’re often the people that are out there speaking and presenting at conferences. They’re there, but you know, that’s, that’s the job and that’s the skill you need to try and find those folks. They are there. They’re always there and then work with them. Cause they’ll be your partners. They become co-collaborators and they’ve come equally important in the first, second and third units that you’re ever going to do deploy.

Antoine Walter:

If I recall the few early adopters I’ve ever met and I’d like to make like a generic portrait of them, they are passionate about what they do. They are in that business for like 30, 40 years. And yes, they’ve published a lot of papers, but what I would see as a threat there is that all the ones I know, and I don’t know that much, but all the ones I know are going to retire in the next decade. So is it like a tropism that, of course, those, those ones are publishing a lot of papers. So you, you, you, you do get them, but once they’re no longer there, a new generation is going to replace them or really is there shifting tectonic plates in the water industry. And those dinosaurs go extinct somehow?

Paul O’Callaghan:

Well, we are losing a lot of institutional knowledge. There’s no doubt about that in the next 10 years. And we’re already seeing it happening. And I love working with those types of people. It’s one of the things that we really value of BlueTech cause we work with people like Graeme Pearce, you will not come across someone that knows more about membranes and that level of expertise, knowledge is not built up overnight. It’s something that it takes quite a while to build up. So we do need to transfer that though one potential change I’ve noticed is when we speak about future scenarios to different groups of water professionals, we gave a presentation one day to water utilities, and we talked about the utility of the future and decentralized distributed models. And the first reaction was, gee, I don’t know, you know, that, that makes me nervous because there could be biofilms on the point of use filter and who’s going to replace the filter and who’s liable for this.

Paul O’Callaghan:

The next morning we gave the same presentation to a group of young professionals and the reaction in the room was quite different. And when we asked the questions, do you have any concerns about maintenance? No. No. That would be a cloud-based system where it could be a service-based business model. You know, a lot of it can be done remotely or it’ll trigger a reaction, which would cause someone to go to that site and replace that we’ll know because of sensors and data. So sometimes the next generation we might find have less limited thinking. So I suppose there’s an opportunity in that. And as long as we understand all the science behind it and the principles and combining that open-mindedness perhaps, perhaps it’s, it’s just different.

Are there shortcuts to Water Technology adoption?

Antoine Walter:

So now let’s, let’s just recap what we’ve learned so far for the wannabe startups out there. If you have a cool product, don’t worry, it’s going to take eight years, 15 years to get it through these early stages. So just keep pushing, it’s going to happen. And you mentioned something about the two types of innovation, the, the value-driven one and the, the needs driven or the crisis driven one and the much more potent one here is the crisis or need driven. And I was wondering when I read that, you know, if I try to optimize everything, you know and I say, okay, there’s this 80 20 rule. 20% of what I do is, is generating 80% of my outcome. So let me just concentrate on that. What are my 80% here by 80% is I need the problem I solve to be regulated. If that happens, then I’m a winner. My technology is going to make it through the market. And I was thinking, you know, why bother developing a product? You have something of a proof of concept start lobbying. And as long as it’s not regulated, don’t pour one single dollar into your innovation. Yeah. Yeah. Well,

Paul O’Callaghan:

Look, that’s a disruptive idea in itself. You know, that idea that perhaps that’s the opportunity is to be the lobbyist, but I think, you know, things get regulated when people care about them, policies that are popular are much, much easier for politicians to push through. The mayor is unlikely to do something that is going to be unpopular with people. So getting people to care about water, getting people to value water is really the starch. And how do you do that? That’s where we hoped to make some effort with the brave blue world, through storytelling and with water. People need to understand that there is value here. There’s value for everybody there’s value for ecosystems or cities, ourselves in terms of our own health. And if we can get people to view it like that, then everything becomes much, much easier

How to tell a compelling story to leapfrog Water Innovation

Antoine Walter:

Facts. Don’t convince people, you have to bring an emotion to bring a story around it. But that brings me to the question. You know, when you look at scientific papers, I certainly didn’t read as much as you, but I read some and all of them tell you, you know, there’s that problem. And we solve it. And technically it’s incredible. And it’s difficult to build a story on that. It’s always much, fact-driven scientifically driven. I had guests on that microphone who were really extreme saying that we really suck at marketing in the water industry. Maybe that’s a bit over the top, but still these elements, you know, marketing is seen as something negative when at the end of the day, telling a good story brings everyone forward. So once we agree on the, on the problem and on the, on what we shall be working on, what is a possible solution to that?

Paul O’Callaghan:

You know, I agree. I think marketing shouldn’t get a bad rap, right? We’re here to serve and we just need to figure out how do we best serve the people that we’re trying to help and what is it we’re doing for them? And if we think of what we’re trying to do for end-users and we work backwards from there, and it’s not about us, it’s not about that particular sensor. That technology is about, this is what the value you’re creating. And you understand that story. And very importantly, you have empathy. You empathize with the people you’re trying to help. And if you do that, then you will be able to market to them. And by that, in some ways that’s simply means change how they think that’s how you change the world. That’s how you win people’s hearts and minds. And that’s what I did notice when I was traveling in places like Singapore or the Netherlands or Israel, when you can get ordinary people to engage with this topic in a way that they Singaporeans know that this is very, very important to their national security. And you can, you can hop in a taxi cab in Singapore and have a conversation about water before too long. And you figure that out because everyone knows an awful lot about it. The same is true in the Netherlands. Same is true in places like Israel. So, you know, we do need to market. I think some countries have done that better than others and some countries it’s been easier for them because it’s just so obvious. You know, that the issues are so obvious.

Reaching the General Public to advance the UN Sustainable Development Goals

Antoine Walter:

There’s a pattern in the three countries you were citing. I mean, Singapore is counting on recycling water to, to cover more than half of, of its needs in the decade to come. I think Israel is recycling 85% of its water. And the Netherlands, if all the countries before on the Rhine river don’t deal correctly with the Rhine river, everything they have to drink is salty water. So when there’s a problem, there’s a high awareness. When I’m just wondering, you know, is if it wasn’t for the UN sustainable development goals who would know out there in the world, if you go in the street that 80% of the world’s waste water is still untreated today. And even today, if you go out with industry, I shall do that experiment one day and ask people how much of the wastewater of the world’s waste water is treated.

Antoine Walter:

How many people don’t have access to drinking water. I mean, that’s the first minute of brave blue word. And if you look, one startup pitch down those days, they all start with that, that figure. But yet I’m pretty sure if you go there and you go to the general population, they just don’t know about it. So is it a chicken and egg problem? If you’ve been dealing with water scarcity for a decade 20 years or forever, if you were in Israel, then you knew about water, but knowing about water helps you also to solve the problems. So I would see a, like a, there there’s a positive circle somewhere, and there’s a devil circle somewhere else. Yeah.

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Paul O’Callaghan:

Well, you know where I’m speaking to you from today in Ireland, the Irish water story about water charges has become notorious. I can travel to Japan and I get asked to go there because it’s the perfect example of how not to do marketing or how not to do this. Okay. It’s a case study. They tried to introduce water charges, which, you know, most developed world countries have water charges. Now they did try to do it during a financial recession, 2008, 2009 in the middle of a very deep financial crisis. So their timing was bad, but the way they did it, people wouldn’t, they were out in the streets, protesting. My mother-in-law was protesting against paying for her water. I mean, she’s not a lady who is a revolutionary, like she doesn’t go to the streets, willy-nilly to wave flags. And yet she felt so strongly about this.

Paul O’Callaghan:

Now, how do you do something so wrong in terms of marketing that people are, we’re not talking a lot of money here. Maybe it was a hundred euros a year. Maybe it was 50 euros a year, but people have this perception that, you know, comes from the sky it’s free, but they didn’t understand that we’re leaking an awful lot of this water. And they also failed to understand that we have problems here with quality. There’s a lot of agriculture run off from fields. You know, that pollutes water sources, they’re all septic tanks that cause problems, there’s pesticides, there’s lead pipes. There are a lot of issues here that need to be solved and you know, that needs to happen. So somewhere on the line, that story did not get told. And it was very, very hard to put that genie back in the box. And I don’t, I don’t see they’ll ever be able to, not at least in the next 10 years anyway, be able to bring in water charges here. So, you know, there, there there’s lessons to be learned there too, perhaps about them, how we can do better.

Is Water considered right on the path to Sustainable Development?

Antoine Walter:

That’s really gospel to me what you’re saying right now, because you know, I firmly believe nowadays, everyone has an opinion about decarbonating energy about driving less cars, eating less meat and still water is magic. You open the tap, there’s water, you flush the toilet, water leaves. Everything else is just, you know, full magic. I’m wondering, you know, sometimes there are some fields where you never hear about it and all of a sudden there’s a unicorn which emerges. And then you, you like that now makes mainstream media around it because there’s that company. So you, there’s something you can grab on. You know, in France, there was this about Blablacar. So car sharing, car sharing, wasn’t really a thing. And then all of a sudden we have a french unicorn and we don’t have that much. So everybody’s into car sharing.

Antoine Walter:

And what’s you cite in your test is that you’re going to go worldwide. Look at every company out there which is coming with a new innovation. There is no innovation that what is in the water sector, that would be a unicorn by the universal definition, which is you make 1 billion of sales. So you made another attempt. You said, okay, if there is no traditional unicorn, can we make some water unicorns? And do you think first, did you find some water unicorns? And do you think that those might be, you know, the, the lighthouses that can attract general population to the topic of water? Because now there’s, there’s a name on it?

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Paul O’Callaghan:

There are examples that we came across. For example, certain types of anaerobic technologies, the UASB has grown to be a huge hit for companies like PAX, for example, and, and others. Dissolved air flotation. That’s now unicorn technology market. It’s been a long time in the making. There are also areas like the water reuse area, for example, that is now a large mainstream application, both on the industrial space, as well as on the municipal space. And if we look to the future and you try and predict what the next unicorns might be, I often do this. It’s like, I begin, first of all, by trying to decide if this was a, I’ve always putting a bet on a horse. Okay. First thing I would decide is what race is this horse in? Is it in the Cheltonham race or the grand national race?

Paul O’Callaghan:

So you pick the right race. And then after that you try and choose the right horse. So like the right race to be in, I think would be areas like decentralized treatment, distributed treatment, digital technologies, and circularity, the three key things. There would be digital, decentralized, and circular. And a lot of the investment that we see going into water, 73% of the investment that we see going into water could be tracked back to those three themes. So it’s converging around three areas. And after that, it can, it broadens out to include other areas. Then I would look for something that had radical functionality or was a discontinuous type of innovation. It broke with the existing materials or manufacturing processes. So that’s the kind of typology I’d be looking for in this horse, in this race. And then I’d look for who’s riding the horse, you know, like who’s the jockey who what’s the leadership, right?

Paul O’Callaghan:

Because that actually makes a very big difference. And that was something towards the very end of the thesis. We began to talk to people and they said, well, ‘a lot of it was down to the decisions we made early on in the, in the management team’. So when you try and pick one company, it’s like a portfolio you’re going to want to be very, very lucky to manage, to pick that one company. But if you choose the right areas, you choose technologies that map to certain technology types. And then if you really look at what’s the integrity of the leadership, what’s their commitment. Are they in this for the right reasons? Are they in this for the longterm? Because if someone’s in this for three years to get rich, they’re not going to stay in it for six or seven years, they’re going to get de-motivated and they, you know, they probably won’t last. So it’s people who are in there for the right reasons and are committed to it are the types of folks that have been able to lead the transformative changes that we’ve seen in the past.

Why did never any Water Innovation grow as a Unicorn?

Antoine Walter:

Well, being in four for three years and getting rich, if you’re into smartphones, maybe if you’re in the water, I mean, lay like you shared. Yeah. It’s more 15, 30 years that you have to, to stay before you get eventually rich to a certain degree. It’s interesting because I had Jacob Bossaer from BOSAQ on that microphone just a couple of weeks ago. And he’s the first of my guests that openly said that he’s is to build a unicorn and to build a unicorn because he wanted to solve those 1.8 billion people number of where we shouldn’t have access to, to, to clean water. And that fully resonates with what you just said. You have to be on a mission if you’re not on a mission. And if you’re not here to stay inside and to, to keep pushing for a while, it’s just not happening.

Antoine Walter:

And it’s exactly what he explained. He was explaining, you know, that people were not investing in this technology. I mean, investors VC, they wouldn’t invest in, in what he was producing because yeah, it’s cool technology speaking, but they were investing in him because they noticed that the guy had something. And that sounds like that’s something which goes along with your research. Let me just bounce something at you. I had the discussion with, and then I stop name-dropping. I had that discussion with Björn Otto, and we were considering if there’s too many engineers in the water world, because I have a water engineer, I have been trained to make faster horses, not to build a car, to make the other, the Ford analogy. So I’m very good at making faster horses, but it might take someone else from outside that comes, gets interested because he watches a brave blue world of things. Hey, there’s something cool to do. He enters the water markets and it says, Hey, now I see problems. And I’m going to find a solution, whereas I’m a water engineer. So I have a hammer and everything looks like a nail. So I’m trying to hit the nails. Do you think cross-pollination is something that could help drastically the water sector to, to move to the next scene?

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Paul O’Callaghan:

I do think that you notice that pattern, that the incumbents for right or wrong don’t tend to disrupt their own businesses. And that’s, that’s true. Not just for the water sector, that’s the innovator’s dilemma. That’s the whole thesis that, that work. We also see new people entering water. I mean, look, people have been speculating. Google got into home thermostats with nest. Are they going to get into, you know, water quality monitoring. And increasingly we’re seeing a trend where everybody from white goods manufacturers, you know, to people who make consumer goods, et cetera, are beginning to look at the decentralized water market. And they have no vested interest in being tied to an existing system. So they do bring different ideas to bear. And I think the challenge or the opportunity, depending on which way you want to look at it for the engineers are in an existing water technology sector is to a, you know, remember that the existing waters industry is going to be around for a very, very long time.

Paul O’Callaghan:

It needs to be around for a very, very long time. But if you want to address that unicorn, you mentioned with the SDG six goals at 1.8 billion people, that’s a huge opportunity. It probably would be met with nonlinear thinking. Somewhat some form of lateral thinking. And we are noticing larger companies setting up special units that are distinct from the main business. I mean, it’s not to come down on engineers. I mean, I’m pretty sure Elon Musk is a good engineer, right? He wouldn’t be able to be putting things in Mars and bitty electric cars and he wasn’t. But it’s people who are perhaps coming out with a fresh perspective. It’s a good thing. And I think there’s a balance there and it’s important. We need, look, we do need people that can continue to build a drinking water treatment plants using sand filtration and coagulation. We probably won’t need someone to figure out how do you provide clean water for somebody that lives in a slum in, you know, in Nairobi.

Could “Good Enough” approaches accelerate the reaching of the UN Sustainable Development Goals?

Antoine Walter:

Talking of slums in Nairobi? I think that wasn’t an impressive examples from, from bread blue word actually said, if you look at what salivation is doing, they are not making toilets as you would see them. I don’t know, in, in Zurich. What I mean with that is that sometimes good enough is much better than nothing. And you should, you shouldn’t be pressing people to achieve the same levels everywhere. I mean, reusing water when you were next to the Congo river, for instance makes no sense. I mean, that’s also something where you, I mean, not creating that, that thought on my own, that’s in your thesis and how do we create the conditions of good enough to encourage innovation? And of ‘done is better than perfect.’

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Paul O’Callaghan:

I think so. I think that’s what we need to remember. We didn’t end up where we are overnight. Okay. We ended up where we are today, where we’re fortunate in, in, in many parts of the world, know that we enjoy sanitation and safe drinking water. It didn’t happen overnight. So it’s, it’s a definitive. Yes, yes, yes. To that question, you need an example that was given to me by Folsom or mojo, who co-wrote a book called the prosperity paradox. Tate and Christiansen was, if you want someone to be a surgeon, you can’t become a surgeon overnight. They’ve got to go to primary school where they got to go to kindergarten, first of all. And then they go to primary school and then they go to high school. Then they go to university to become a doctor and then the train to be a surgeon. And if you think that the only way forward for these billions and billions of people is that they’ve got to move directly with no stops this system that we have, you’re condemning them to be left forever without water.

Paul O’Callaghan:

It’s an unsolvable problem. It is truly a paradox and we won’t get there. What we’re seeing is that these, these folks, these people out there who they’re desperately looking for a solution, that’s good enough. And one of them that they’ve widely adopted, whether we like it or whatever we think about it, there are over 200 million people in the world. Now that rely on some former containerized, bottled water for their safe water. There’s, there’s more money spent in California every year on bottled water than there is invested in utility water and in the developing world, Mexico city, for example, many of the parts. And that’s frightening in one sense that so many people would rely on that and it’s gone tenfold, but it’s, it’s not as convenient as turning on a tap, but it’s a solution. And I think to come up with solutions, which are safe and good enough, but maybe not identical to what we have is where we, we need to put ourselves in these people’s

How California spends more on bottled water than on utility water

Antoine Walter:

Shoes. You mentioned California. And that struck me as well. I mean, so many things struck me in your, in your thesis, but you were citing a report from 2003, which says that in California, 80% of the people don’t drink tap water. I guess there is again, a matter of, of storytelling here because yes, some might need other sources of water, but still if you have that source available and it cannot be bad for 80% of my water engineering hurts would hurt much too much if really water was that bad.

Paul O’Callaghan:

You know, the, the old Laszlo’s, well, the Harmer people do provide drinking water in pipes think that the solution to everything is a drinking water and a pipe, right? I’m not convinced that it is. I have to be very objective you’re. I visited my sister in Mexico city two years ago. And in her kitchen, she had a 50 lier or maybe 25 liter water container. And she’d also just put in a water filter on the tap and she’d asked me about the filter. And I said, oh yeah, I just go for a versus most as an activity card. But they, in their home, we’re sort of relying on the water container and Nick, who am I to say to people that that’s not the right solution? I think maybe it is. And for some people in many parts of the world today, and maybe you can harvest rainwater.

Paul O’Callaghan:

And also I think just completely re-engineering in the home. There’s a great initiative that I’m a fan of called the 50 liter home at the moment, which is designed to re-engineer the house, so that you live comfortably with access to everything you want and need from water, all the services, but with 50 liters per day. And if you completely eradicate that problem, you can get there. So let’s, let’s not ever become, become overly attached to these one type of solutions and think that you know, there’s a moral high ground here. There’s no moral high ground. You simply want the best that you can possibly get for people know at an affordable price and then get them on the right journey on the right path.

Can the CoVid 19 Crisis help adopting Water Innovations?

Antoine Walter:

I have a last question for you in this deep dive. I’ve been reading a couple of psychology book just because I find it quite funny. And there’s one thing for marketers to apply to psychology. It’s if you have a life event, which is just changing your life, then it’s probably the best time for a sales guy to come to you and to try to sell you something, even if it has nothing to do with the change that you’re currently experiencing. And there are dozens of example, for instance, you get a baby and someone can come and sell you a bike. It’s going to work because you have a baby and you’re going to find a way in your brain to put two things together. And now I’m trying to think at that exactly like you do in a positive way. We are all one year into this COVID crisis, which is a shock to everyone, I guess. So it’s probably the best point in time to come with a clever message around that and to say, Hey, here’s why it matters. Here’s what we can change and how water innovation can drive this forward. Here’s why pipe and tap water is not the future. Here’s why, I mean, do you think this analogy has some truth and how can we leverage that Momentum?

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Paul O’Callaghan:

COVID-19 is a issue which has taught us that we’re not isolated. We don’t live in a bubble wherever we are, we’re interconnected, and we need to pull it together. If we want to solve it. Now COVID-19 will come and go. Just like the Spanish flu came and went in 1914 climate change. Unfortunately, won’t be like that. Okay. There’s no vaccine that someone’s going to come up with. Certainly make that go away. And likewise population growth, aging infrastructure, urbanization, deteriorating, water quality, none of those things are going away, but they they’re similar in one sense to the analogy in that they should create the environment. Like when you have a baby and you’re willing to pay, you know, a fortune for a new buggy, they should create the willingness because we’re all facing these issues. They’re not existential. They’re not far, far away. Okay. They’re, they’re closer than we think.

Paul O’Callaghan:

So those things are still there and they’re the bigger picture and they share the commonality and that third they’re global or they’re hyper-local. So I think I’d be more thinking about those types of issues. I’d be more thinking about what, what does buying your newspaper medium of PFAS do in terms of your attitude? What does being in California and seeing wildfires, ravaging, you know, forest, what does that do to your attitude towards you know, water conservation? So I think those are probably the longer term issues that will drive the type of changes you’re talking about in behavior.

The three technology fields that attract 73% of Investments in Water Innovation

Antoine Walter:

I said that was the last question. Let me cheat. I have one more. If there was a change happening, you gave us three directions, you said distributed digital, circular, and I believe you said 73% of the investment currently is going into one or many of those directions. If you were to bet on the horse and to say out of the technologies out there, which are in these early stages, this one is going to become a unicorn. Which one would you bet on?

Paul O’Callaghan:

I wouldn’t bet on one. Yeah, I mean, look, it’s it, one technology, I think the area you you’d have to bet on would be, you know, any, any solution out there that can deal with the most, the top three most pressing needs. We have, you got too little water, too much water and poor quality water, you know, and as long as you’re tackling one of those issues or all of them or multiple ones, and I would include blue-green infrastructure, this isn’t an investment area, but I do believe that increasingly you’ve got to go upstream to get these things right. Okay. You can’t solve everything at the end of the pipe. You really got to think of about it more holistically and more at a systems level. And if you get it right at a systems level, by getting the catchment, right, restoring the habitats, getting the ecosystem services, right. You’re, you’re going in off we long way towards mitigating storm and flooding towards deteriorating water, quality eutrophication, and towards scarcity by hanging onto the water. So how you turn that into an investment opportunity, that’s a different thing, but there are ways you can combine digital with blue-green. That’s a super, super exciting possibility. You’re combining really simple. Low-Tech with really, really advanced high-tech and that’s the type of stuff that I get excited about.

Antoine Walter:

Thanks a lot for this deep dive. I propose you to switch to the rapid fire questions.

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Rapid fire questions.

Antoine Walter:

For the rapid fire questions. I mean, they are the simple, it’s short questions, aiming for short answers, but I’m not cutting the microphone. If you have more to share, what is the most exciting project you’ve been working on and why?

Paul O’Callaghan:

I’m working on brave blue world part two at the moment. And that’s exciting because it’s, it’s new and it’s creative and you’re trying to imagine it. And you’re really trying to see what it wants to be. So exploring that and all these stories about ancient wisdom about water, combining that with modern technology and looking at how different people have coped with some of the issues we’re facing in the past. That’s, that’s one of the things that I find exciting.

Antoine Walter:

What’s your favorite part of your current job?

Paul O’Callaghan:

Research, continually learning, working with great people. I love seeing the young team members coming on and trading in their careers. I got a lot of satisfaction and fulfillment out of seeing that they’re realizing their potential and just working with good people

Antoine Walter:

In general. Yeah. The next one is on the trends, but you just answer it. So let me go down to the fourth question. What is the thing you care about the most when you’re working on a new project and what’s the one you care the least about most

Paul O’Callaghan:

Of what quality, that’s probably the most important thing of anything. You know, I mean every, every everything comes secondary to that. Okay. It’s not that we don’t have to make everything match up, but I think that’s the most important thing

How to keep up with Water Innovation?

Antoine Walter:

I have a difficult question for you. Do you have sources to recommend, to keep up with the water and wastewater market trends?

Paul O’Callaghan:

Of course, BlueTech Research. I do think that we do a good job of that. And I think that it’s something we’re very passionate about. Other than that podcasts like yours, Antoine. I mean, I think there’s a body of work that you’re creating here that is exceptionally powerful.

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Antoine Walter:

Thanks a lot. I’m going to blush on the microphone, which is a good thing because it’s not recorded. And final question, would you have someone to recommend that we should definitely invite on that same microphone and why is that Matt Damon. Ok, I cheated.

Paul O’Callaghan:

If you can get Matt Damon and Gary Vee, I think that would be a fantastic COO. And I’m not, why not? You know, I would say David Lloyd Owen, I would recommend if you haven’t spoken to him, David Lloyd Owen has written a book about water funding. That’s such a deep dive into SDG six. It’s incredible.

Antoine Walter:

Thanks for that recommendation. And if people want to to keep up with you what is the best place to follow you to follow your work?

Paul O’Callaghan:

If people wish to keep an up to speed with what we’re working on, brave blue.world, where we communicate around the brave new world project, the impact that we’re having, you know, the ongoing work we’re doing and the words the filaments receiving and winning the BlueTech side of the business, the research and analysis work that we do is probably best tracked on BlueTech research.com. You know, we’re always available and we love chatting with people about water innovation. And we do that at our event BlueTech forum, which has gone virtual, but we look forward to coming back online and that will be BlueTech forum.com. So a few different avenues there, depending on which people choose to engage.

Antoine Walter:

So all of them are in the episode notes if you’re listening to that. So thanks a lot, Paul, for all this wisdom you shared with with our listeners. And if you have some, some free time in your press release for, for brave blue world 2, and you want to share it on a microphone, I’d be really glad to have you. No, thanks

Paul O’Callaghan:

So much on 20 and very much appreciate that. And look, thank you for the time you took to research this interview so much thought that you put into it. You have huge respect for that, and it, it made for a very engaging conversation. So thank you very much.

Other Episodes:

FREDsense: Revolutionizing Water Quality Monitoring with Biosensor Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 7 May 2025

Swirltex: Revolutionizing Wastewater Treatment with Bubbly Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 30 April 2025

Blue Foot Membranes: The Next Evolution in Water Filtration

By Antoine Walter | 16 April 2025

Echo River Capital: Pioneering the Future of Water Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 3 April 2025

1001 Fontaines: Engineering Sustainable Water Access Through Social Entrepreneurship

By Antoine Walter | 22 March 2025

Amazon’s Water Footprint: Tech Giant’s Quest for Water Sustainability

By Antoine Walter | 19 March 2025

Turing: The AI Revolution Quenching the Water Industry’s Thirst for Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 26 February 2025

Altillion: Pioneering Digital Intelligence for Water Asset Management

By Antoine Walter | 6 February 2025

Flocean: Pioneering Ocean-Based Water Solutions

By Antoine Walter | 15 January 2025

Botanical Water Technologies: Harvesting Liquid Gold from Plants

By Antoine Walter | 4 December 2024

The post How Long Will it Take to Grow? The 4 Stages of Water Innovation. appeared first on (don't) Waste Water.

RLV Consulting helps Water Innovators to translate their technical R&D into Business Chances, Go-To-Market Plans, and Investment Opportunities

What we covered:

How to build a sustainable frame to overcome water scarcity?

How agricultural water uses – often a blindspot of the water industry – triggered innovation in a good example of constrained creativity

How scarcity can be an overall driver for innovation

How national water law and central planning are the two pillars of Israel’s water miracle

How those pillars lead to new water applications such as distributed treatments

How we’re in an evolution process, that turned Homo Pollutius into Homo Ecologicus, hopefully, Homo Reusis and ultimately Homo Circularis

Drip Irrigation, Solar Heating, Aquaponics, World Leadership… and more!

… and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨  

Teaser:

Resources:

Send your warm regards to Ravid on LinkedIn

is on Linkedin

Antoine Walter on LinkedIn

Infographic: Israel Water Miracle

Full Transcript:

These are computer generated, so expect some typos

Antoine Walter:

Hi, Ravid. Welcome back to the show. Oh,

Ravid Levy:

Hi. It’s great to be back. And actually even very flattering to be invited to for the third time for this great series of podcasts!

Antoine Walter:

Well, let’s start maybe by catching it, our auditors that missed your two first appearances. What would be your very short version of your elevator pitch for yourself? Basically,

Ravid Levy:

I regard myself as someone who’s linking between the technological side and the business side for a water and wastewater innovation, I’ve spent the first 15 years of my career in, in, in different companies, Israeli companies that were developing and producing and applying different water technologies around the world spent a few years in Australia and many years in Israel doing international and technological work. And now for the last few years, I’ve been doing that as a, as a consultant to different organizations in the water market to basically bridge the language gaps between research technology and business to try to to move forward. Some of those obstacles in the way

Translating technical innovation into Business Opportunities

Antoine Walter:

If I remember, in our discussion around innovation, you mentioned that there is almost this “lost in translation” element between business and technical activities. And there’s one aspect of your path that we didn’t cover so far, which is what you’re doing with the Migal Gallia Institute. So what is it, what are you doing there? Well, this

Ravid Levy:

Is what really triggered the, the addition of research to the third language beyond engineering and business because behind everything or in the basis of, of many things in our business or in our area of work, there’s the basic research that he’s done around the world and also here in Israel, in the, in the academy. So a Mikhail is actually an academic Institute, which is positioned in the very final for Israel. And the works is a regional research Institute, but obviously works on many things that are have global or international implications. But the specialty is mainly food tech, biotechnology, agriculture, and different Cleantech aspects, including water and wastewater. So I’ve been asked to help Miguel in translating some of the water waste, water and environment researchers into practical and market readiness. It’s been called business development, but in fact, it’s kind of a matchmaking and translating if, if we use your your term for that, which is correct, I work with the researchers themselves, with the scientists and with the IP people and with the market with companies and also help everybody to come together and take some of those very interesting innovations towards more, a product and more practical and eventually commercial application.

Antoine Walter:

I was reading a study on that. It’s very interesting that you mentioned who was showing that out of the wide array of of research available. And most of the time this researcher brings something to the field of water into the way, which with water, but from this wide array of possible technologies, there’s really a low percentage that ever gets to application. And I’m not even talking here of commercialization, but really to application. So if I get your rights, you’re, you’re here to avoid that

Ravid Levy:

To avoid or may actually yes, to narrow that gap and try to take more good scientific ideas beyond the papers and the PhD, theses and everything into more practical aspects and eventually commercial aspects. Now, most universities and research institutes today have a commercial arm or a commercialization company, even that is in charge of doing exactly that to bridge those gaps and locate good ideas in the research and take them to the market in different ways. However, I find that in many universities or institutes that water wastewater and even some other environmental aspects are being kind of left behind or fall between the cracks, because the dedicated people in some of those commercial arms of the research institutes are not water and waste water experts, and they don’t know the water and wastewater market specifically, it’s a niche. And so this is exactly where I try to help to come as someone who knows the market and knows the needs and knows sometimes the competing technologies or, or the different applications. And that specifically pick those water innovation and try to advance them towards that specific market. And I’m doing this for Migal, and I’m also happy to do that for other institutes in other places. I think it’s a niche that is being a little bit neglected, and that’s why maybe partially the percentage of turning scientific invention into innovation. Practical innovation is a little bit low.

Fostering Innovation at Country Level: the example of the Israel Water Miracle

Antoine Walter:

I was reading the thesis of Paul O’Callaghan, and he has these two elements of the, the value-driven innovation and the need or crisis-driven innovation. And I would say despite all the odds we are in an industry where value-driven is a very difficult path. If you come with added value and there’s no active thing to force it to be enforced, it’s probably not happening very slowly. Whereas if it’s need driven and most of the time need driven has to be understood as there was a big crisis like Flint, Michigan, which you, I think you brought up last time we discussed or really something terrible happens, or simply there’s a new regulation who enforces everybody to do something. Then it’s a green field for innovation. And the link to our discussion today is that I’d like to see how a country like Israel is dealing with this kind of different ways to do innovation in the sense that if there’s one place in the world where it’s probably difficult to have access to water it’s probably Israel.

Antoine Walter:

And I would see that, you know, from hundreds and thousands of kilometers away as probably a driver yet, it’s something that I’d like to, to pressure test with you today. And just let’s take that as a teaser for something we will be discussing later on. Let’s put that idea in the fridge and let’s start from the beginning, which is, you know, at the time we record this episode, there’s the Giro of Italia that just started. And there’s the cycling team called Israel startup nation. I bet they’re not going to win the Giro, but still they, they bring this awareness of Israel being a startup nation. And the last time, actually, the first time we discussed, we were discussing about Israel as a water startup nation. We were adding the water element. And yet if I get you right, yeah, there is something happening in the water sphere in Israel, but not to the same level than it would be happening in other spheres. Is that true? And if it’s true, why so?

Ravid Levy:

Think it’s, it’s true. I, I, first of all love the branding of Israel as the startup nation. I think it has a lot of reality in that. And if you just look at the numbers and whichever way you want to take it from patents per capita, to how many unicorns I’ve been you know, made out of Israeli startups in the last couple of years, it’s amazing, but when it comes to water, I think there needs to be a little bit of perspective that separates between Israel is a hub of water management and water innovation and the startup part of it, which is just relatively small, although important and growing part of that, there’s a lot of things in which Israel, I guess, can be an example for innovative and also successful water effluent, whatever management however, not all of that really translates into what can be called as the water startup nation. There’s A lot to be proud of and, and still a lot to aim for in that regard.

Israel: a Water Start-Up Nation?

Antoine Walter:

So what’s a good indicator of what makes someone innovative in a field like water.

Ravid Levy:

First off all, the way that I don’t know if someone, but let’s take a nation or a country. Yes, of course. So first of all, the world deals with its own water scarcity and water challenges, and then the next phase, how well it manages to export that success or that or the not know how and all the innovations again, we’ll be seeing that we’re the law, I guess, today, to other places that suffer from similar problems. One thing that we rarely talk about in this water market environment that I guess your podcast is trying to cover many aspects of, of the water market, but there’s one very, very important. Maybe the most important by the quantity of water that we hardly speak about, which is irrigation or agriculture. Agriculture is the biggest user of water by far globally. I think about 70% latest or you read of the global water use is going for irrigation.

Ravid Levy:

Now, the quote or the definition I said before about innovation is actually taken from the head of innovation for Netafim, which is an Israeli company that in the sixties invented the drip irrigation in the south of Israel in the desert in order to make water use by, by plants, more efficient. And today it’s the, it’s the world leader in, in drape or precision irrigation and a billion dollar company. But that invention initiated, as you said, is all said in his disease out of need. I wouldn’t say a crisis, but definitely a continuous need of not enough water to grow crops and food in the desert from that point. And today in Israel, a lot of the agriculture is being irrigated by drip irrigation and that invention, which like the definition before solve the need, address the need in a new way, and then made a lot of money, way more than it costs to develop. And now all around the world solve similar or the same needs in other places. So that’s an example of an Israeli need that led to a local invention that turned into global innovation that these days solve a lot of water problems around

Invented in Israel: Drip Irrigation

Antoine Walter:

The world. It’s interesting what you say first, it’s funny when you look at the map of the words used in terms of irrigation, because you fully, right. It’s the elephant in the room yet? The one that we don’t address that much, and I think there are two countries in the world where irrigation is not the first use of water. And it’s a UK in Ireland. The reason being that it rains so much there, that they don’t need that much irrigation. So, but it strikes in all the other places Switzerland, France included where we have so much water steel irrigation is the first user. And the second thing makes me think that you know, of this constraint, creativity, I think it was encapsulated in the Apollo 13 movie, but it’s a true story. It’s the story of how you get creative when you have just 24 hours to save people which are somewhere out there in the capsule in outer space, and you can just be creative with what you have. You cannot send them a space ship with additional tools. So you have to do with what you have. And that is to me a bit, your story of this drip irrigation in Israel, if you don’t have more water, when, how can you optimize your use of water up to the point where you are making something awesome with what you have

Ravid Levy:

Exactly. And that way, if you want another example from again, a different angle that connects to water, but we rarely think about or deal with enough is the connection between energy and water. And then this goes to another Israeli innovation that started back in the sixties, but made mandatory in the seventies. And this is solar water heating. Now you rarely think about how much energy is being put into heating our water at home and multiply that by the number of homes. So Israel in the seventies suffered from both water scarcity as always, but also again, almost until recently also energy scarcity. And it was invented here and made mandatory in the seventies. And today, from what I know about 85% of all homes in Israel have solar water heaters. And that saves about six to 8% of the national power use. Now think about how many countries have so much sunshine and now invest in.

Ravid Levy:

So a lot of solar power, but still people turn on their water heaters every day at home using power. Just to take a shower, I’ll give you the example from my home in summer here, we practically never turn on the electric heater from around the may all the way to September and in winter, when there’s a sunny day, you’re mostly covered. And that’s again, well at the end, it’s it’s water. This is not maybe saving water, but saving a lot of energy. And that we keep on saying that water energy nexus. I don’t think we’ve realized enough how closely those things are related. And and we can speak later and more about this connection of water, food, and energy and all, and how all that must be now combined in the new age of, of innovation. You cannot anymore just improve water and forget about the energy use or other things, or improve agriculture without counting for water use and energy use, et caetera.

Water-Energy Nexus, Common Sense or Central Planning?

Antoine Walter:

But if you recall the examples you shared those. So these drip irrigation, the solar heating, it sounds like common sense, examples and common sense has this beauty that it can be used everywhere. So that’s the second element of that. You mentioned that how you can do something locally and then use it somewhere else. But usually common sense is also quite difficult to enable. So is that something which is different in the way you look at those water challenges in Israel compared to maybe other places in the world? W what is the key? What is the almost a special source that enables that common sense to be taken on scene? And to be simply enforced?

Ravid Levy:

I’ll surprise You because it’s not very, maybe common, but not very popular these days. The answer is central planning because yes, we’re on the democratic world and then the capitalistic world and the market should decide, but common sense sometimes when it comes to mutual resources. And we see that now more and more with climate and with emissions and all that, sometimes it should a little bit, at least to some extent come from above. And the Israeli experience is actually exactly that before all those innovations and before all those of big successes and everything that other countries may be looking at Israel for, there were two basic pillars that the entire Israeli water miracle, if you like, we’re built on one was back from the fifties and that’s national water law. That was one of the first laws that were put by the founders of the state, which defines all water resources around the country, both above and below ground, both dirty and clean everything from rainwater to sea water, even to be public domain, to belong to the public. There is no private water in Israel. There are some waters that is being allocated by them by the government to private entities, of course, but the ownership of water resources by law belongs to the public and therefore, and that’s the second pillar. It allowed to establish very efficient central planning and central management systems for the, this national resource.

First Pillar of Israel’s Water Miracle: Central Planning

Antoine Walter:

It’s really surprising because when you say central planning, you know, people think of a communist countries and Israel is seen as a very liberal country.

Ravid Levy:

It did start as a semi socialistic country, but these days, those foundations that were set back in those days are really helpful to manage this very limited resource in a modern democratic. And as you said, startup nation underneath there is central planning of that specific very limited resource.

Antoine Walter:

How does that look like? How does the central planning look like? Is it like a document that comes on the 2nd of January every year? Is it on five-year plans? There’s a

Ravid Levy:

Long-Term planning and there’s obviously an annual a plan that takes into account the rainfall and the available resources. So when there’s a, a for example, a good winter, if you, as we call it here, right, or relatively a higher rainfall, then the central planning can downsize a little bit of pumping from underground to replenish groundwater levels, or sometimes also to reduce a little bit purchase from the desalination plants to, to balance between the different sources and the cost. Of course, that is involved in all that. You cannot look at the Israeli success in managing its war is limited water resources without understanding that underneath all that lies central planning of that resources and that not everyone can just do whatever they like with the water underneath their feet.

Second Pillar of Israel’s Water Miracle: The National Water Law

Antoine Walter:

You mentioned the, the Israeli success and the water management. And thanks a lot for placing the context to that. But you know, when you’re looking at, at Google, I think the second most asked question on Google when it comes to to water and wastewater is how does Israel treat and reuse it’s industrial wastewater first? I’m not sure why they targets industrial and not just water in general, maybe it’s to overcome still something, which people are really, really keen to understand that we reuse waste water in the industry, but don’t tell them that they might be drinking the pee of the neighbors. They are not ready for that. Aside from the psychological aspect, is there any difference between the way industrial and municipal waste water is dealt with in Israel’s it’s all that part of the central planning?

Ravid Levy:

There is a difference to a certain extent, but everything is still going under the overall water law. And the part that the central planning plays in that, however, there’s important definition or differentiation to be done here, municipal wastewater in general is being treated and mostly reused in Israel. This is maybe a famous fact, but it’s still worth repeating and emphasizing about 85, maybe more these days already percent of all domestic wastewater in Israel is being treated and reused for agriculture and only for agriculture, right? So all these discussions about drinking, your neighbor’s pee, or, or toilet to tap and all that is practically irrelevant in Israel, because none of the waste water is being reused for drinking. There is a very strict and clear separation you may say, and you probably will be correct that we eventually eat much of that in our fruits and vegetables, because yes, a lot of the irrigation agriculture in Israel is based on reused effluents.

Israel’s Water Miracle involves a lot of Agricultural Water Reuse

Antoine Walter:

That element of reusing for agriculture, you know, in Europe, it’s not that long that it’s allowed. And even now that it’s allowed. And really we are speaking of a couple of years, it’s not like decades still. I was reading this morning, an article in a French newspaper, which was explaining that it is difficult to get past all the regulation barriers. You have to treat it to such an extent that economically it just doesn’t make sense at all. You may be green minded, but still, if it doesn’t make sense, you’re just not going to do it. That’s one of the elements of sustainable development. It has to be economical if it’s not well, it’s just not happening.

Ravid Levy:

The approach in Israel is that we don’t have a choice. So it doesn’t make sense economically if you have other sources of water, but if you’re in a negative water balance and you still want to grow food and to advance your economy and to export fruits and vegetables, like Israel is very good at, you need to get the water somewhere. Apparently it does make sense. Eventually it is correct that the stricter, the regulation, the more expensive it will be to treat. And therefore you need to account for that also in the, in the different users of that water. So it will eventually make sense. And here, well, maybe I should have said that before. I’m not speaking for the Israeli government or for anyone. I’m just speaking out my mind and my opinions and my experience here. And therefore I’m also free to maybe to critisize or also to say what, what is still what still needs to be done. And so it is correct that Israel leads the world. And by the way, by huge margin in the percentage of effluent that is being reused, I think Israeli is almost 90%. The closest one behind that as far as I read is maybe 30, 25 or 30%. However, when it comes to regulation and to quality we still have a way to go. And also of course, with the technology that needs to be used in order to reach that quality,

Antoine Walter:

Two elements here, if you treat almost 90%, that is reused, how do you treat it actually, what is the treatment scheme? What is the policy you add? And a second question, and then you can take both of them. How does it look in the industrial world? Is it like the same amount? Is it more, and are the treatments similar or do you see major differences?

Ravid Levy:

So first of all regarding the domestic waste water, so the majority is treated by the conventional primary activity, that’s large or similar biological treatment more and more. And I think we’re close to the majority or almost there is treated tertiary. So with advanced filtration of beyond the secondary and with chlorination with disinfection, this is the basic treatment, which if done properly meets the Israeli regulation for irrigation, of course, that it’s not as simple because irrigation of different crops requires slightly different qualities. Therefore tertiary will only be used for for irrigation of crops that require that while non-edible crops, for example, can be irrigated with a slightly lower quality. The regulation gradually gets more strict. So more membranes are being used lately to get to, you know, high tertiary quality in terms of solids bacteria and others, AOP and other advanced treatment are still in discussions. Let’s say this way, it’s still not regulated to that extent in when water goes to irrigation. But again, it’s almost unfair. It should like the science fair, but it’s almost irrelevant to compare this reuse to what happens in orange county or in Singapore where the water from the beginning is intended to go to potable or maybe to advanced industrial applications. Therefore the treatment technologies must be different.

What is the next frontier for Wastewater Reuse in Israel?

Antoine Walter:

We are back to this topic of common sense. Sometimes it’s just good enough. Why would you treat the water up to drinking water levels? If it’s to irrigate some crops that would, by the way, benefit probably from a bit of organic matter and where you would have less additional chemicals to put on it to make the crop growth. So, yeah, we are back to common sense.

Ravid Levy:

I agree, when it comes to nutrients and fertilizers, you’re absolutely correct, but we, we should not forget all those emerging chemicals and hormones and other things that are now starting to be in the center of attention, definitely when it goes to potable. But I think personally that they should be more also accounted for when it goes to irrigation of edible crops, because at the end we will eat those again. And so those materials probably should be also taken care of.

Antoine Walter:

It’s another fascinating field if you ask me, because when you look at these treatment of emerging contaminants, one of the way to treat them, which is of course almost impossible on full-scale, but, but which works quite nicely is, is the Reed beds and to take basically nature to break them down. So you could imagine it doesn’t work for all of them, but it works for some of them. If you have really those, some of them then probably you don’t need to remove them because the crops are going to do their job and be part of the solution.

Ravid Levy:

You’re right. I just must comment that in some cases, in some places, some solutions are more relevant than others. Israel, for example suffers also some parts of Israel suffer from land or from footprint limitation. So for example, much of, of the wastewater today in, in central Israel is being treated by aquifer filtration. But those lands are limited. It’s huge ponds where they trickle into the aquifer and then being pumped back in center irrigation, extremely high quality. But these days we need to start thinking about alternatives that are more compact because the population grows and the land is limited. So the Reed beds and all the natural solutions are extremely efficient and very, very good, but they may take quite a lot of area that we need to make sure that we have

How is industrial water managed in Israel?

Antoine Walter:

Talking of these spaces where there’s a bit less place. Usually that’s the industrial world as well. And what about using the industry?

Ravid Levy:

So industrial wastewater is is always around the world. I think a very delicate issue when it comes to wastewater. Every industry has its own wastewater and very different from each other. A lot of the Israeli industries eventually discharge into the domestic sewer, which eventually goes to treatment and reuse by the domestic wastewater plants. And it is very, very important to, to monitor and to regulate those in order to make sure that the eventual treatment plants are not being disrupted, but even more important that the eventual effluents that are being reused are free of contaminants that originally came from the industry like heavy metals, like other things that are usually absent from domestic waste water, but can be added by the, in the industrial industrial waste is always, and will always be probably one of the biggest challenges. And also there’s a, one of the first adopters of water innovation and technology, both because they’re easier maybe for adopting new technologies, but also because the needs there are higher. And the regulation is sometimes stricter,

Antoine Walter:

Which gives me the opportunity to send two little “Hi”s to other Israel startups I had on that same microphone regarding what you said on the emerging contaminants and how we could be really targeted at taking really the most problematic ones out of water. We had that discussion with Gabi Wolkinson and Ofir Menashe on the microphone from bio castle, because they are encapsulating some, some bacteria that might be then exactly that that was compounds. And I’m talking of the distributed side, even if Gilad Yogev from Fluence explained that they have solutions that go also on the central end of the market, there is for sure a special interest for their autonomous solutions.

How Israel’s National Water Law encouraged Distributed Water Management

Ravid Levy:

One thing that Gilad Yogev, by the way, from Fluence, where I spent quite a lot of my own career, one of the things that also came out of the Israeli experience in a way, and also from the national water law that does not differentiate basically between big cities and isolated settlements and villages all are under the same law. Everybody should get the same quality of water and also should answer to the same or almost the same regulation. And from there started a lot of this, what is now a very you know, common buzzword, which is decentralized or distributed water treatment and wastewater treatment because each and every village settlement, army camp, whatever you want should have an has practically its water supply. And if it comes from a well in, in the far desert, then it needs a containerized desalination unit. And then the waste water also needs to be treated, preferably reused in the fields of, of that village or kibbutz or whatever. And so the, the heritage of decentralized water and wastewater treatment also has roots in the Israeli water management heritage, I guess. And now that approach is also taken to the world.

Antoine Walter:

What about taking to the word? And and thanks for that smooth transition. We have this reuse aspect where you, you, you explained us how Israel is leading the pack somehow, but it’s probably a solution to much more places than just Israel and probably the same for distributed or decentralized treatments

Ravid Levy:

More arid places I would start with. So asking France or Switzerland or the UK to copy, or even take too many ideas from the Israeli water management scheme is a little bit ambitious, but there are so many arid countries in the middle east and beyond. It is impossible to copy solutions, but the ideas and the principles and some of the technologies can, and it should be adapted from one place to the other. And we should do the same here when we upgrade our reuse to higher standard or to more you know, emerging contaminants we should. And we must go to places that already deal with that for maybe portable or other applications and adapt them to our irrigation needs. For example,

Replicating Israel’s Water Miracle

Antoine Walter:

We have to be careful when we say it’s only for our replaces, because, you know, I had the discussion with Jacob Bossaer from BOSAQ on, that same microphone, and it was sharing that there was a place in Flanders in Belgium, which is really comparable to Sub-Saharan areas when it comes to a, to this aridity. So sometimes it’s really in the middle of places, which are water rich, that you still have these water scarcity element. So that’s

Ravid Levy:

Why I said, or what I wanted to say is not arid countries looking at this on, or only on the country level is a little bit misleading. And even in Israel solutions in the, in the north where it’s wetter relative to the south might be a little bit different.

Antoine Walter:

So somehow we are back to this topic of decentralized because you have the central planning, which has to give you a frame, but then it has to be local solutions. If you see that you are in an arid area, then reuse makes sense. And if you see like, like me, I mean, from my window, I see the Rhine river reusing my water would probably make little sense. Whereas protecting the Rhine from nasty effluence makes a lot of sense. So, well, men,

Ravid Levy:

Many people might claim that you are reusing, but other people’s water from upstream.

Antoine Walter:

Yeah. Very true. A bit less. Since that, since we were built, finally, wastewater treatment plants have been everywhere in Europe, but but very true. I mean,

Ravid Levy:

But if they, if they discharge into a river, it will go somewhere. If those treatment plants distribute separately, their effluents to irrigation or to industry directly then correct, it will never go into the river and will never be reused by people drinking downstream. So this is, again, a bit of a, of a decision. Of course, I understand that in some countries reusing for agriculture, doesn’t make much sense, but we’re using it for industry. For example, makes a lot of sense, rather than using your limited freshwater resources to feed the same industry. By the way, this is one thing that I think Israel can still go beyond where it is today. Diversify the destinations of reuse from only agriculture, also into industry. I don’t want to claim that maybe one day potable will also be included, but before that there’s so much fresh water that is being used by industries. And that can be relatively easy. And I think not with too much investment, be replaced with with domestic effluence, that can be reused.

Human evolution of wastewater handling: towards Homo Circularis

Antoine Walter:

Yeah. If I look at the infographic you produced last year about this evolution of men or more reuses, which is the last step, the one which is reusing its water is, is the final evolution. No,

Ravid Levy:

It’s not actually, I think this is the almost evolution, the final evolution. Well, so since this is a podcast, we can go through just remind the stages. I, it starts with just discharging the wastewater to the environment. It goes through treating it before discharge again, the next stage, and this is more environmental stage before we get to using the water is to treat it. So it won’t be such a horrible pollutant to oceans and rivers and everything. Only after we treated, we can start reusing it depending as we said, level of treatment to be matched with with reuse destination and, and requirements and and other limitations. Once we’ve done all that, we are only using one part of the resource that is there in the wastewater, which is the water. It is 99 or 90 something percent of wastewater is water. But if we just reuse the water, we are still losing a lot of those resources that we may benefit from in the waste water.

Ravid Levy:

And this is, that’s why I call the final level of volition step holistic, your lack circularity, which means that we were used everything. Of course, not everything, but everything that makes sense and that we have the technology and the use for in the wastewater. And that’s obviously starts with energy and then also nutrients precious metals, if it makes any sense or whatever we already have there rather than the oil or the traditional concept of the water industry is that wastewater includes pollution and pollution must be eliminated. So clean water can be taken from the other side to whatever we do. But if we change that paradigm and start looking at whatever in the wastewater, not just as a pollution, that should be eliminated, but as resources that can be recovered, then the entire concept of treatment also can or should be changed.

Are “good enough” and “always better” two competing paths?

Antoine Walter:

Now, let me take my devil’s advocate hat for a second. I’m fully with you as a, as a water professional to see that there’s this, this water, which was before and treated, let’s stop calling wastewater. Let’s say it’s a, it’s a resource. We take out everything that’s could harm the environment. We reuse that water. We take all the particles out that can be reused somewhere else. Phosphorus there, cellulose. They’re a heavy metals there. I mean, lots of things like that, that really sounds like, you know, a water engineer’s dream. So that’s awesome. But if you consider that there are places in the world where, I mean, and not so many places in the world, it’s just, it’s the vast majority of the places in the world where the wastewater is, is not treated at all today. Basically, you know, it feels a bit like if I go to my daughter and I tell her, you know, do these, these, these, these, these, and I gave her like a list of 20 things she should do. She’s just not going to do anything just because she knows that she, she cannot do the 20. And if she does 18, I’m still going to tell her, you know, you didn’t do the two other ones, so why bother and start at all? So don’t you think that at some points, if we optimize it too much, we are sending the wrong message and the good message might be we’ll do something and whatever you do, it’s better than nothing. Yes.

Ravid Levy:

So I, I actually think the opposite and I think there are a few examples for that. And I’ll try to convince you my basic approach is that there’s no need for everyone everywhere to go through each and every step of this evolutionary development like we did, or like you did in Europe over the last two centuries, this is exactly where this so-called flat world can have a benefit. The fact that in Switzerland, it took 200 years to switch from railways watering in the river to complete. So reuse for portable or somewhere else to me means that where now water is being dumped wrong, or wastewater is being dumped with the river, can at least technologically implement tomorrow. If the resources are there, other things are met, there’s no need for them to go step by step through basic treatment. And then later upgrade to secondary and tertiary, blah, blah, blah, and you know, and maybe expedite and everything 150 years now, the technology is there, the economics already known, and there’s no needs to go through everything.

Ravid Levy:

And a good example for that is some countries that lacked almost every communication infrastructure and then cellular communication came in and sold so many problems. And now cellular no 3g, maybe even 5G soon, we’ll be there without going through the Telegraph and the telephone and the fax and, and, and everything, because it was there ready to be deployed and answered many questions by the way, maybe just maybe if we have a valid economic basis for recovering resources out of wastewater, it might actually give the incentive for those places that today see no value in that water. They don’t lack water because maybe they are tropical countries and the, and the reusing, unlike arid countries where the water is actually the resource that is limiting. And it gives the incentive for using right from Israel to California, to Australia. But what happens in central Africa, they don’t need the water, they have excess water, but what about the other resources maybe having valid or solid economic basis for extracting metals, for example, for the battery industry or nutrients for the fertilizing industry, or just energy, clean energy out of the wastewater, they will keep dumping the water back to the, to the river and the ocean because they don’t need it, but they will have the incentive for treating it from the other resources.

Ravid Levy:

Now, this sounds a little bit like too good to be true and like a dream. But I think that once the technologies will be there, be proven and scaled up to economically get those resources out of the wastewater, it will create completely new markets.

Central Planning as a way to overcome early financial hurdles

Antoine Walter:

Somehow that brings us back to the central planning, because, you know, in this French article that I alluded to earlier, there was a very revealing example. They were saying that all the reuse project in France are on the west coast. Not because they need the water at all, but just because when they’re discharging to the, the Austrian, then they have alga bloom, and they have a problem with the fishes, which does appear. They have a problem with balance with the ocean. So it’s not about the water. It’s about the macro picture around. It’s exactly what you’re sharing. Last question. Do you think we are far from having the full array of technologies we need? What is the, the primary field we shall be looking at? I was under the impression that, you know, technologies like phosphorus recovery are already pretty advanced. Is that true?

Ravid Levy:

I, I don’t feel that yet. I think that when it comes to treating the water, cleaning the water, a lot of the technology’s already there. It’s already proven. There are already full-scale examples that devolution in terms of the technology is still not everywhere, but there are very good examples, even for potable reuse, right? You go to orange county, California, it’s a, full-scale enormous. And what an amazing as, as a water technologist’s perspective, example of how large scale potable reuse scheme can work over many years and, and economically and efficient. So that site cleaning the water is quite advanced as always a lot of improvements and always new inventions and new innovation that can be applied by the way. One part that is still at its very early stage is all those emit. Some of those emerging contaminants like PFS, how come we haven’t mentioned PFS yet in, in the last 30 minutes is the hottest thing out there.

Way forward: From the Israel Water Miracle to the World!

Ravid Levy:

The technologies to deal with that are just starting to imagine scale up and obviously goes hand in hand with the regulation in the U S and in the Europe, in other places that mandate treating that to very, very low levels, both in audible water, but also in effluence and leeches and other sources. But they feel that this part is quite advanced. The resources recovery part of things is still much earlier in its development, maybe except for one aspect, which is biogas from sludge, but still the sludge just represents a fraction of the chemical energy that came in as bod or Sylvie into the plant, because we oxidize, we invest a lot of, of energy in order to supply oxygen in most cases, to break down that energy that that organic load. So energy production, nutrient recovery, obviously everything we mentioned before, like heavy metals and other things that today is, seems like the problem, a very big environmental and health problem. The battery industry sees that as gold practical, literally sometimes now is it cost-effective to extract those from different streams, not necessarily wastewater take all the brine that comes out of the salination plants. This is another type of wastewater that at the moment is just being discharged as is as long as it meets the environmental regulation. It’s perfect. But in fact, it also can, or may include some of precious resources that we might want to recover if there is an economic basis for that.

Antoine Walter:

Yeah. We’re back to this bigger scene and you have to look at the biggest scene rabid and propose you to switch to the rapid fire questions.

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Rapid fire questions.

Antoine Walter:

The problem is that usually the rapid growth questions are the questions which everybody gets, but you got them and you got the second set as well. So I had to create a third set for you.

Ravid Levy:

You never fail to amaze me!

Antoine Walter:

You see that? The first question is actually very, very linked to what we were just discussing. What is the top synergy we predict for waste water treatment in the next decade, AKA with wet can, can it be coupled to increase the overall yield and why two buzzwords

Ravid Levy:

Knew, but the energy at the moment, this is not a consideration in most water management schemes or production anywhere. I think the other thing which we already discussed is circular looking at water and wastewater as of a broader circular economy that involves not only water, but also other materials. And again, energy, I think that’s where everything must go.

Antoine Walter:

What is the one thing we do today in the water industry that we will be looked at as totally nuts in 20 years bottles?

Ravid Levy:

I hope they would be, it would be true that in 20 years, we’ll look at that as, as ridiculous. I’m not that optimistic, but still one is bottled water. The other thing which we already covered is the discharge of untreated Westworld to the

Antoine Walter:

Environment. If you were a word political leader, what would be your top three actions to influence the fate of the words, water challenges. We’ll just take

Ravid Levy:

One more three, but this one, but this one is, is huge. That’s global reuse targets take the carbon emission reduction targets and the global treaties and agreements that they are with all the commitments of different companies. And most of all, states and countries for reduction in emission, if it would be up to me, there would be a similar global agreement and a quantifiable targets for each country, of course, based on its current situation, very similar to the, to the common situation. Not everyone can and should commit to the same level at the same rate, but everyone should have, should have a target.

Passing the Sustainability Torch

Antoine Walter:

How do you share sustainability caring with the next generation?

Ravid Levy:

As much as I can. I have a solar power system on my roof and my kids are responsible for cleaning it from dust once a month during summer. So they share the, the effort for producing clean energy. We have a hydroponic system where we grow up vegetables and some things, and we watched a rave blue world on Netflix together for what it’s worth.

Antoine Walter:

It’s always dangerous. You know, you watch that. And then you’re, you’re concerned that a bit more, but still it’s important to have this global vision. I mean, that’s true for brewer. That’s true for CSP resi. That’s true for all the, but it’s good sometimes to get a kick in the like Michael Moore did for the Flint, Michigan story. So yeah, it’s been a renewed pleasure to spend that time with you. Can we remind everyone of where they can follow you? Maybe then

Ravid Levy:

I skipped the evolution of websites and and those kinds of things, and I’m trying to be active and present on LinkedIn. So I think that’s the best way of reaching and communicating. And I’m always happy to do that with everyone in the water market.

Antoine Walter:

Thanks. Thank you.

Other Episodes:

FREDsense: Revolutionizing Water Quality Monitoring with Biosensor Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 7 May 2025

Swirltex: Revolutionizing Wastewater Treatment with Bubbly Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 30 April 2025

Blue Foot Membranes: The Next Evolution in Water Filtration

By Antoine Walter | 16 April 2025

Echo River Capital: Pioneering the Future of Water Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 3 April 2025

1001 Fontaines: Engineering Sustainable Water Access Through Social Entrepreneurship

By Antoine Walter | 22 March 2025

Amazon’s Water Footprint: Tech Giant’s Quest for Water Sustainability

By Antoine Walter | 19 March 2025

Turing: The AI Revolution Quenching the Water Industry’s Thirst for Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 26 February 2025

Altillion: Pioneering Digital Intelligence for Water Asset Management

By Antoine Walter | 6 February 2025

Flocean: Pioneering Ocean-Based Water Solutions

By Antoine Walter | 15 January 2025

Botanical Water Technologies: Harvesting Liquid Gold from Plants

By Antoine Walter | 4 December 2024

The post The Two Surprising Pillars that Support Israel’s Water Miracle appeared first on (don't) Waste Water.

120Water is an end-to-end solution for drinking water programs, COVID-19 wastewater sampling, and compliance.

This episode is part of my series on Water Digitization – check it out!

What we covered:

How the Idea for 120Water came from scratching own itches

How the company swiftly pivoted from B2C to B2B or B2B2C (I hear you like acronyms? )

How digitizing the way you test the water and manage the results actually enables a whole new world of operation and maintenance

How bringing this information in plain sight helps to educate the public on the water topics and challenges

How innovation can be inhibited by regulation

How you shall consider non-technical parameters such as demographics when prioritizing maintenance works (and how 120Water helps with that)

How having been involved in 13’000 programs across 26 States turns 120Water into a bespoke lead expert (and how that leads – no pun intended – to adjacencies)

How a fresh eye on the water sector can be shocked by what water professionals got accustomed to (e.g., black boxes)

How customer communications might still be a blind spot for the Water Industry

How Energy may be a role-model market for the Water Sector when it comes to marketing

How you can’t manufacture growth (but may actually “hypergrow” your path to impact)

Michael Moore, PFAS, IPO… and so much more!

… and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨  

Teaser:

Resources:

Send your warm regards to Megan on LinkedIn

Have a look at 120Water’s website

is on Linkedin

Antoine Walter on LinkedIn

Infographic: 120Water

Full Transcript:

These are computer generated, so expect some typos

Antoine Walter:

Hi, Megan, Welcome to the show!

Megan Glover:

Thank you so much for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Antoine Walter:

Well, actually, you know, I always like to start these episodes with a postcard and you’re in a city where I should brag about, you know, you’re in Indianapolis right now and for the one that would ignore it and I’m sure nobody ignores that, but there was a French guy, Simon Pagenaud who won the famous 500 miles two years ago. So how is it to live in a city which is dominated by French culture now?

Megan Glover:

I actually was at that race too. That was actually my first Indy 500 and my first race there. Yeah, it’s humbling, right? Yeah. It’s very humbling. It was a sign, right? He was meant to win. No, it may, may is an exciting time and he is welcomed back to win the oval track any time.

Towards 120Water

Antoine Walter:

So, yeah, actually, you know, I had many guests on that podcast, many of them being water professionals with a full track record of being water professionals. And there’s one common pattern between all of them. They all told me, you know, if there’s one thing in this water industry is that we suck at marketing and somehow you’re the exact opposite to that. You are a marketing professional that for whatever reason, had a weird epiphany at some point and said, Hey, I want to go to the water industry. How did that happen?

Megan Glover:

That is ironic indeed that it was, yes, I am spent over a decade as a marketing and sales executive and enterprise cloud-based technology. So building software, enterprise software across lots of different industries, MarTech sales, retail, healthcare, ed tech, and water found me is I like to say because I was a concerned consumer of water here in the States circa 2000 and late 2015, we had the Flint Michigan crisis. And that was an epiphany for me as a consumer of water because I wanted to know what’s in my tap water. And I called my water department and asked if I could test my water. And they sent me a consumer confidence report and said, well, we don’t test your water, but here’s this thing called a consumer confidence report. And that didn’t do it for me. You know, I mean, in this day and age where I was buying organic snacks for my children and hormone-free, uh, protein and milk and, uh, and I get my DNA tested through 2.3, me, why couldn’t I have my water tested?

Megan Glover:

So what I like to say is water found me, but my background in marketing and specifically providing and building solutions that help consumers, right. And help people do their jobs better kind of allowed me to think about, well, if I wanted to get my water tested, how would I do that? That was kind of the original idea and managed to take that to a couple of mentors and investors of mine and raise a little bit of capital. And within six to eight weeks, 120water launched. And that’s really the original origin of the story

How Megan Glover shaped 120Water

Antoine Walter:

Talking of 120water at listen to your very good interview with my good friends, Jim Lauria and Adam tank on the Water we talking about podcasts. And I was just thinking, when listening to you, you know, one 20 water could have had many shapes. And one of those shapes when I was listening to you explaining that, you know, many people were concerned about this difficulty to have access to a very costly water sample. And I was thinking, you know, why not build the Groupon of water? You collect all of them and say, Hey, let’s get a better price for our water testing. So in all the reality, that might have been your, your venture, but it is not so far. I understand what you’re doing. So can you pitch us 120 water?

Megan Glover:

120Water, so who we are today. So we are a digital water platform and that platform consists of cloud-based software point of use kits and services that government agencies, water systems and facilities use to manage their drinking water programs that protect our public health.

Antoine Walter:

So now there’s 120Water, but what was existing before? What are you replacing?

Megan Glover:

Actually when we launched 120water, we actually thought it was going to be a business to consumer company. And why we exist? There’s still a need for that. But what we found as we were launching the company was that our solution was very, very applicable to water professionals, trying to skate to the pack and, and execute these new water regulations and water demands in a post Flint world. So what was happening when our very first water utility customer in Pittsburgh, they actually had opened up a consumer water testing program. So anybody within their distribution could call them and request a water testing kit. The problem was they didn’t have any infrastructure to deliver those kits. It was taking the beta 4,000 kit backlog, and it was taking them four months to fulfill that program. And so we heard about this, we went there, we said, we have this very modern, you know solution to this problem.

Megan Glover:

We can come in here and clean this up and no problem, and sure enough, we won that business. And so we ended up taking that 4,000 kit backlog and taking it from four months to 14 days and completely modernizing how those results are getting to the consumer. So at the end of the day, they can cut through the science and say, is my water safe to make easy math? Right? Can I drink this water? Should I be concerned? So we completely modernized. And re-engineered that process. And then have gone on to build a business around that, around compliance and that, you know, those types of programs.

120Water’s path from B2C to B2B

Antoine Walter:

So it was supposed to be B2C and it ended up being B2B. The kits are still the same, but what you change in between is all the way they are handled. So basically all the logistics around and you bring that digital element.

Megan Glover:

That’s exactly right. So what we replaced is essentially the, the manual field labor, right? I, I am a field contractor. I go to my workshop, I get a paper bag, I get the bottle, I drop it off at the consumer’s house. You know, I pick it up two days later, I drive it to the lab, you know, with all of the point of use testing that now has to occur with all these regulations that just doesn’t scale. And it becomes very, very expensive. So we essentially automate all of that and have real time tracking so that the customer knows every step of the way where those kits are the results as soon as they come in and then the communications back to the end user as soon as possible.

Antoine Walter:

So, you know, when I hear that on one end, it’s, it’s fascinating. And no, if I take my devil’s advocate hat, I’m like, you know, we’re in 2021, come on, let’s do IOT, industry 4.0 or 5.0, or 6.0, and I can pour so many buzzwords at you and put sensors basically at the end, at every tap. And everybody would be just opening their tap. And the sensor is automatically connecting to a satellite via Mars or whatever. You are relying on sturdy proven kits. And you’re saying what was to be improved was everything in between. The kits are just fine,

Megan Glover:

But we say that that last mile in innate making that last mile of, of sampling easy and visible for the utility, and actually the reason why they are good old analytical laboratory tests is because at least here in the US, the EPA is so slow to recognize any methods that aren’t run on a machine in a laboratory. And I’m as an innovator personally excited for the day when we can connect to real-time sensors to bring that data in because for us a result, as a result, as a result and the faster our customers in the market, get those results, the easier that they can make real time decisions. So we may have met the market where they are today of the analytical laboratory testing, primarily that’s where our regulations are today in the US

Harvesting a load of Water Data

Antoine Walter:

I’m French. I think I’m alluding to that too regularly on the, on that podcast. And I’m never afraid to do a bit of French shaming. You know, that there was a regulation in France three or four years ago, which was an enforced to make more analyzes at every waste water treatment plant, because they wanted to measure micro pollutants. And so they started measuring, analyzing, took all the results. And then they found out that they have no way to gather all the data and do anything useful with it. So they were doing all the tests and the analysis feeding databases, and no one was looking at them. And after two years they just stopped the regulation because they were like, okay, we are measuring thing. We are spending money to measure things and we don’t do anything with it. Which drives me to, to my question is you’re making the logistics much easier, but where does the data flow to? What do you do with this data? How do we leverage the data?

Megan Glover:

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that’s, again, back to not being in water, starting from enterprise software and business software, bad data in bad data out, right? No data insights, no improved workflow. And so when we build our, you know, our, our software and application, it’s one, how do we make our data electronic? Because I mean, we are replacing paper. We are replacing at best Excel sheets, right? So first it’s, let’s get data normalized in a cloud platform, but then our platform essentially automates all of these workflows, inclusive of compliance that our customers need to do their work. So everything from once the data comes in, if there’s any reporting or notifications that have to happen, we also have predictive tooling. What that means is particularly in the US around service line infrastructure, our customers need to know where these the material types of these lead service lines. So we use the data that’s coming in from the sampling, from their Curbstop and, you know, information from third-party sources to actually feed predictive information back to the utility. So, you know, again, we’re still a five-year-old company and that area of our business is growing. But our whole philosophy is, you know, one, we need to get the data in a unified digital format. And then what are the workflows and predictive indicators that need to happen from there.

Tracking Water Quality with help of 120Water

Antoine Walter:

You mentioned the B2C vision you had at the beginning, and then the B2B way, it transformed somehow as an end-user. If I’m doing this testing with my kits and everything is much smoother through your platform, but what do I get, do I also get my results? Do I get my tracking?

Megan Glover:

Yeah. And again, this goes back to me being a marketer, starting with that, that end consumer experience first is actually where we started. So for example, we do lead programs anywhere from lead in daycare facilities, all the way to water systems, you know, just doing standardized lead and copper rule or consumer testing. One of the very first things we created was a, essentially a public transparency dashboard at any point in time, anybody in the community can go to that dashboard and, you know, see, you know, they can see, you know, a service line material. If that information exists, water testing information. When was the last time this tap was tested? What was the result? If there was an exceedance, what was the remediation? So one making that data transparent to the community. And then also that one-to-one communication that you alluded to. So what does the actual consumer get, having their water tested?

Megan Glover:

They receive a wonderful, again, communications driven letter, not scientists driven letter, right? Not EPA driven letter. It’s Hey, we’re going to tell you what the science says, but then we’re also going to explain why there’s no reason to worry. One of the other things that our system does that I think is really important is we actually trigger the remediation as well. So if we get a, an exceedance, you know, if it’s over the action level, we can also drop ship a pitcher filter kit as well. You know, cause one of the things we found very early on working with our customers is we can’t just send them a letter saying they have let go to your home Depot and buy a pitcher filter. They actually want that solution delivered directly to them. So we really try to bundle that up in one, nice, easy to consume package for them.

Antoine Walter:

How often does that happen? How often do you measure something which is outside the threshold where it should be?

Megan Glover:

That is such a wild card question, because it’s all dependent on your age of your infrastructure, corrosion control methods. Here’s the thing though. What I always say, going into a new program, as you’re going to find lead. If you’re an older system, you may find a higher percentage of lead across your distribution system. When we’re dealing in school scenarios and older schools, those, you know, build less than, you know, probably 1970s, it’s not uncommon to see lead in 20% plus of the fixtures that we sample. So that’s why we say you have to start at the end about what are you going to communicate to your stakeholders when you find lead? Cause you’re going to find lead or you’re going to you’re for sure, going to find PFAS. If you are sampling, you’re going to find what you’re sampling for.

How 120Water also helps with Infrastructure Projects

Antoine Walter:

Yeah. That’s the beauty of the water analyzers is when you don’t look for something, you’re quite okay, you don’t find it. But if you start looking to stuff, I mean, every water has some caffeine inside. Not everyone wants to have their coffee when you’re just take water from the tap. So I guess of course, yeah. If you look for something, you find it, you alluded to the infrastructure and I saw on your website that you also help with the infrastructure. How shall I envision that? Is it that if you see that in that part of the city, you see lead coming more and more led or something else, you would then warn the utility and tell them, you know, if you have to prioritize the way you want to replace your network, please start there.

Megan Glover:

Yeah. Yes. That, and I mean, again, the first step in getting the lead out is knowing where you’re going to probably find it. And so part of what our platform does and the programs associated with our platform is helping our utilities and communities better pinpoint where they’re going to find lead. And again, we do that through customer outreach. We do that through predictive intelligence. Again, we do that through you know, combining a lot of their different data sets. So one it’s just helping them kind of pinpoint where they might find lead within their distribution system. We do sequential sampling. So a lot of our customers may actually do some pilots in terms of collecting multiple samples from aligned to see if they can kind of pinpoint where that’s coming from. And then I think the other thing that our platform and we help our customers do is once they know they need to start replacing this or prioritizing where they replace lead, it’s going to the vulnerable populations first. So we track things even down to where we can, what’s the demographic of that location. Are there any pregnant or seeing, you know, children in the home, you know, again, are there other vulnerable characteristics where you might want to prioritize that area of your community over another, in terms of replacement of the lead pipes,

Antoine Walter:

The heart of, of your offering is around this, these water quality. What is the boundary, or do you fix any boundary to what you could be doing in the future is a field like, I don’t know, non-revenue water is something which might be of interest for you, or is it really something you would let to others?

Megan Glover:

Yeah, I think one of the thing about not coming from water that I love and appreciate about it is water is really sourced to tap and it’s massive. And I think one thing we’ve learned at 120 is we start with an idea and inevitably year over year, we expand into another adjacency and we do that because our customers say, well, if you can do this, could you do this? And yeah, actually we can and we can connect it here. And so, you know, in terms of how our solution has grown and I think where we’re going, I mean, we’re going to continue to make sure that we are experts in the lead programs, right? I mean, that’s where we’ve come. That’s where we are. That’s we’ve, we’ve done over 13,000 programs in the US across 26 States. We have more data and experience doing that than probably any entity.

Megan Glover:

So we will never let that go. But there are all other sorts of water quality programs that our clients are tasked with managing that are still very antiquated and need some modernization to them. So when we think about, you know, where are the boundaries and where could we go? We’re kind of in that process of identifying what are the other segments that we should be looking at that have kind of those same characteristics is as lead, not scientifically, but programmatically that could use some modernization and inclusion of sensors. You know, again, an where could we bring in sensors to help provide some more data, especially across things like Legionella and PFAS that need more real-time monitoring that, you know, a sample a year is not going to provide them the best picture.

When Software partners with Hardware

Antoine Walter:

If you go into those new topics like Legionella, like PFAS, is it a point where you partner with established hardware companies and you bring this software and market touch because, you know, if you’re a sensor company, you have a hammer and everything looks like a nail. So you’re not really sure about where the where’s the market. Whereas I would really subscribe to what you were saying about being new to the industry. You have an eye which looks at the problems and then looks for solutions. So back to my questions, would you partner to, to make that happen?

Megan Glover:

Absolutely. A thousand percent. I mean, in fact, that’s the other thing that it was so shocking to me being a newbie and water was how black box and closed off these ecosystems are in water. And it’s not that way in other industries and especially other industries where you had platforms really succeed and help transform industries. And so our philosophy as a business is we would much rather partner with best of breed technologies, whether it’s IOT or other software applications or other services, rather than trying to reinvent the wheel on our own. So we have an entire partner ecosystem where we actively look for partners. That may be good fits not only now, but even down the line.

Antoine Walter:

You mentioned that you’re active in 26 States. I would guess one of them must be California.

Megan Glover:

We do have a client in California. It’s not the most active state.

How trust in Drinking Water is not a given – even in developed countries

Antoine Walter:

Okay. Now I’m just asking, because I read a study from 2003, which was saying that 80% of the people in South California don’t drink tap water because they don’t believe in the concept of tap water, or they don’t believe that it’s safe to drink. And California, I’m not the best expert in geography, but it’s quite far from Flint. And that study was 12 years before. So it looks like there is a long way to go before everyone in the U S gets kind of trust into the tap water. Is it a mission you want to fulfill on the long run?

Megan Glover:

Yes. I mean, absolutely. I think I say this a lot when I speak to utility professionals, when they say, well, we don’t have competition. Yes, you do. The bottled water industry is your competition. And right now they are better marketers than you and their product. And they probably have an inferior product, but they do a better job marketing what’s in their water. You know, again, part of our goal as a company is to make the quality of water more visible so that consumers feel very comfortable drinking that tap water. And we’ve seen that over and over again! Again, Pittsburgh, that initial customer of ours, the amount of distrust between the customer and the utility, you could feel it, you could cut that with a knife. And now, you know, five years later, they are such an example of good, you know, their customers are thrilled that they’re actually replacing their aging infrastructure. They’re doing this testing whenever they want. And so it really is a, I think those are models or examples of when utilities focus on marketing and branding and help kind of raise the quality of their own water. I think you can get people drinking more water. I think that is I might be on the far extreme though in the US in that mission. I think it’s one thing to have a mission, but how do you actually put that in practice as a whole is a whole other can of worms!

120Water may help with storytelling around quality

Antoine Walter:

But, but it’s very interesting that, that you mentioned that this marketing element, because had this discussion on, that same microphone with Jacob Bossaer, from BOSAQ, he was mentioning that he intentionally mirrored the marketing of bottling companies to say he’s making premium drinking water, but that actually flows to a tap. So that is something which is maybe, which is today a missing link in our industry. And, you know, I was listening this week to I don’t know if you know, Louis Grenier, I have to, to align a bit in terms of, of marketing. So we have, he has this wonderful podcast called everyone hates marketers, and he was recalling this week, an interview he had with Seth Godin. It was all about, you know, facts that are not going to change people’s minds. You have to, to put yourself in the shoes, have empathy and, and build stories around that. So my question here is you’re bringing facts to people because did they have the, their results, their samples who tell the water is good, just drink it, but still, if they are not convinced, or if they are really kind of reluctant to drink the tap water, that’s not sufficient. You cannot just stop there and say, Hey, it’s good to go chemical, say it.

Megan Glover:

I agree. And I think that is again, I actually did a panel yesterday and I called this out to be one of our number one threats as an industry in the U S that we’re not paying enough attention to, and this is communications and customer communications. I mean, the amount of conferences that I go to where communications isn’t, doesn’t even make it to the agenda or a talk track. And it’s just so integral to the success of what you’re talking about, getting that, that storytelling and that, that, that message across the finish line, because we can only do so much and we can only do so much for free. That’s the other thing, too, the budgets for marketing and communication in water in the U S is almost, non-existent now the budget for when there is a crisis and they have to communicate about that crisis is infinite. But as I like to say, do, why do you want to be in reactive reaction mode when you can actually be proactive? And when something occurs, you know, you have a communication reputation plan in place just to be able to, you know, not react to a crisis, but be proactive in that communication. So long-winded to say, I completely agree with you. And I, you know, I would love to see communications as a discipline in water, become a lot more prominent in the US I think it’s going to need to be,

Antoine Walter:

It’s interesting because you know, there is this, I’m talking a lot over France today, I’m sorry, but there’s this, this French bottling brands I think it was Perrier, when they arrived in the U S it was hard for them to sell bottled water to the Americans, which is there, wasn’t like this tradition of bottled water at the time. And it turns out that 50 years later we have the exact opposite problem. So life is a cycle it’s, it’s almost frightening. You’re doing something, but where to start, where should we start? What is the common story? Our industry has to tell if we wants to bring people back to that tap.

Megan Glover:

And I think though, it’s going to take, I mean, I don’t, I actually I’ve heard that before. And I would love to read a case study on it and actually see how much they actually spent in branding and in the type of executives that it took to actually, you know, get that brand and impede it in people’s minds. Because I think it’s going to take that level of talent and muscle. It’s not going to take people in water to do that. Just point blank. I think it’s, I think it’s going to take an entire industry to adopt water as a sector that they want to modernize it. And I think we’re, you know, we’re seeing that on the energy side a bit in the US, I mean, again, the energy as a sector has invested more in marketing and branding to kind of level up all of the education that’s needed around sustainability and conservation and whatnot. That same thing needs to happen in water, but I think it’s going to take experts outside of water to educate water on, on what we need to do. But yeah, I think that’s a great example.

120Water as one of the World’s Most Innovative companies

Antoine Walter:

So I guess it’s going to take companies which are innovative. So I’m pretty glad to talk with one of the most innovative company in the world. Actually, you are on the top of that list. So I think we got a glimpse of what takes you at that place, but what’s your interpretation of being first, far in the ranking? What makes you different?

Megan Glover:

Yeah, that, that, that was a really cool as a, as again, as bootstrapped. I mean, I can’t, this business was bootstrapped. I mean, literally I was filling bottles on my kitchen table and to actually get that notification that we were among the most innovative, I mean, just kind of blew my mind. I’m like, how did we get from there to there? And, but honestly, I think it’s because we’ve never, we’ve never said no, and that could be crazy, or that could be the best thing that ever happened. But we made that list for launching our wastewater monitoring solution. And, you know, our customer came to us and said a state wide customer. So, you know, as territory in Indiana came to us and said, we need to stand up a wastewater monitoring network in like 10 days. And so anyway, we basically said, okay, is this enough? Is this close enough to our core competency and capabilities that we could do this? And if so we’ll do it. And sure enough, between our laboratory networks, our kits and the way our platform is set up, we were really able to meet that demand. And, you know, and we didn’t say no, you know, and I think that’s part of the innovation that we brought to the market is listening to our customers to the extent where we believe in it, they believe in it let’s go.

Antoine Walter:

So basically you were advocating for that movie. Yes, man. So in your case, sorry, you mentioned that that bootstrap elements, but I would say that is now history for 120Water because you, you just closed it. I mean, you, you closed some month ago a series a, so now you’re really changing levels. I mean, you raised seven millions, right?

Megan Glover:

Yes. yeah. We a series a seven, 7 million. We’ve now added a little bit to that as well for hyper-growth so, yeah, I mean, we are kind of series a we’re venture backed. We have over 50 employees, which to go from zero to 50 is pretty great. We’ve all grown up and it’s an exciting place to be for us.

Can 120Water follow a hypergrowth path?

Antoine Walter:

You mentioned one word. Usually I’m the one who raises this hypergrowth question. I’m annoying all my guests to ask them if hypergrowth is possible in the water branch, you come with that. So thanks for that. The unicorn path is like you have to multiply by three and by three and by two and by two, and then you reach 1 billion, you did 250% growth last year. So you are on leg. One of that path is – that’s the golden question – is hypergrowth a suitable strategy for the water sector, in your opinion?

Megan Glover:

I don’t know. You know, I think our philosophy is we just want to grow as reasonable and fast as possible as the market will allow, but I think the market has to be ready for it because you can’t manufacture growth. And I think you have to have venture capital. That’s willing to understand that the market needs to dictate when they’re ready to buy innovation in water. And that’s what I’ve been very clear with our investors that we found is that, you know, we can’t manufacture growth or put a flashy thing in front of customers and, you know, magically budget appears for them to buy. So I think I don’t believe that every company in water should be venture backed. I think at some point in time, we won’t grow a hundred percent year over year or even 60%. And that’s going to be okay

Antoine Walter:

More than okay. In that sector. I mean, 60% you’re a rockstar.

Megan Glover:

Yeah. Yeah. That’s good. And that’s going to be a okay, because that means that we’ve captured the set of the market that wanted to be early adopters will now wait for kind of that middle part of the market. And but yeah, I mean, I didn’t start one 24 a quick in and out. We just started to build a really sustainable business to modernize, you know, water quality, and we’re following the pace of how fast the market wants to grow.

Crossing the Chasm as a young Water Company

Antoine Walter:

So you would say that you are at this crossing the chasm phase that you have to, to move from these early adopters to, to this early majority. So I’m not mentioning that just to mention that many companies die in that, in that stage. Not at all. I wouldn’t try to put a spell on you, but you mentioned that you, you, you, you moved from zero to 50. Do the 50 already work with you or are you still in that growing up phase?

Megan Glover:

Yeah, I think we’ve my philosophy is you want to hire just ahead of growth, but not too far ahead to your point where you stall. And so I think we’ve you know, we were very responsible during COVID because we didn’t know what the market was going to do. And so we stalled a little bit of growth. So part of that growing to 50 was a little bit making up in some areas that we, we held off in, and now we’re at a really good place. I mean, I think we were going to add, you know, a handful of heads here and there, but we’ve done the majority of our hiring that we’ll do for a while. And then as you know, I mean, this, this market is so channel driven as well, that a lot of our sales are attributed to our partner ecosystem, some of our channel partners. So, you know, we want to make sure that we have enough direct folks and full-time employees, but at the same time, how do we build out that ecosystem? And that, that global channel ecosystem that is, that is so important for growth here in this market too.

Antoine Walter:

So you mentioned, and you’re absolutely right, that you cannot manufacture growth, but to watch me do that tricky transition to a tricky question, they are sensor manufacturers in that market. Hey, manufacturer growth / sensor manufacturer. Hey, so, so brilliant. And they might not have these digital acumen and this market acumen that you have. And I think I read that in, in Paul O’Callagan’s PhD thesis, that he was mentioning that there is no water unicorn. It just doesn’t exist. There’s not one. And there’s a reason it’s that usually before a water company becomes a water unicorn, they get bought out by a company who, who needs some external innovation. So what’s your path is that path. Or at some point you ring the bell in New York IPO, and you are that first water unicorn?

Megan Glover:

I wish I had that Crystal ball. I mean, I think there are a number of doors that one 20 water could go down over the course of the next 12 to beyond years and months. And I think we’re exploring all of those. Do we stay as a standalone company and raise some additional funds to do our own acquisitions and really make this a standalone company? Does it make more sense for 120 to be a part of an existing digital water platform? So without good showing cards or whatnot, I mean, we are kind of exploring all of those doors, but that doesn’t change our vision and roadmap for the company, you know, and in terms of where we want to go. And so I that’s my job, right? As balancing the future while also operating the business day to day, making sure we get what we need.

Antoine Walter:

I would have like 2000 additional questions, but I have to be cautious every time I would invite you to come back to that microphone in five years, just to check if you just rang that bell in New York, or if you’re now part of a conglomerate, but I propose you to switch to the rapid fire questions.

Megan Glover:

Absolutely. I w I will be back in five years. I’ll take you up on that.

Antoine Walter:

Oh, let me, book the calendar, just when we’re done with that interview, I really want to see where that’s heading!

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Rapid fire questions.

Antoine Walter:

In this rapid fire question section. I try to keep the questions short. And of course, if you can keep the answer short as well, we keep the rules and don’t worry. I’m always the one cheating inside writing. So my first question is what is the most exciting project you’ve been working on and why?

Megan Glover:

I’m always the first project when we did the entire state of Indiana lead testing in schools, we sent over 500,000 children back to school with safer drinking water.

Antoine Walter:

See, I’m sidetracking from the first question, but what’s your feeling when you, you close that first project? Is it like pure excitement or are you terribly afraid because what could go wrong?

Megan Glover:

Yes. All of the above, all of the above it is the adrenaline, right? I mean, you’re literally building the engine as you’re flying the plane and it’s absolutely terrifying, but to see those results in numbers, it’s just like an out of body lifting experience.

Antoine Walter:

What’s your favorite part of your current job?

Megan Glover:

Oh my goodness. I love our customers. My favorite part of my job is, is talking to a customer about a really, really challenging problem that they’re trying to solve. And just going into ideation mode with them and saying like, how do we solve this together? So really our customers and going in the trenches with them

Antoine Walter:

Sidetrack again, the topic you address, is it something which is really on top of their minds or do you have to tell them why they should matter

Megan Glover:

Right now? The lead topic is, I mean, it’s all consuming. It’s not on the top of their mind. It is their mind. And right now, where are we on the United States? It’s helping them even just say, where do I begin? Like it is so overwhelming and all consuming that that led at least in the U S is very top of mind with all of the Biden infrastructure, as well as they revise lead and copper were visions coming down the pike.

Antoine Walter:

Well, you know, I, I could tell you how wonderful polyethylene is as a replacement to lead, but I’m not here to do my own advertising. Have you ever met Michael Moore by the way, because from an European view and you know, Flint was first this Michael Moore documentary.

Megan Glover:

No, I have met Michael Moore at a conference. He would not remember me from Adam and it was a marketing conference, so I wasn’t even water at the time, but yeah, our, I attended his keynote.

Antoine Walter:

What is the trend to watch in the water industry?

Megan Glover:

Gosh, I think the trend to watch in the industry and I’m biased on this, it’s honestly, I think it’s the digital transformation, I think to your point, there’s a lot of data that’s being analyzed and thrown out there, but it’s what are we going to do with it? And I think it’s going to be very interesting over the next decade to see what gets done with data. That’s the keys, what is going to be done with data?

Antoine Walter:

So data crunching, data analyzes…

Megan Glover:

Data science. I mean, I think if anything, you know, what we proven through our wastewater monitoring solution through a lot of the data science use on predicting lead pipes, is that it is helpful. If you can get massive data sets and use them in the right way, it is very helpful for public health and infrastructure, repairs and whatnot. We just need regulators and industry experts to recognize that as an applicable method,

Antoine Walter:

What is the thing you care about the most when you’re working on a new project and what is the one that you care the least?

Megan Glover:

What I care about most is delivering outcomes for our customers. So I hold my in any large project that we get, I hold my breath. It’s like a, it’s like the longest underwater swim ever. Not because I don’t think we can do it, but we just want to Excel in the outcomes that we deliver. And then my least, my least favorite part is procurement. There are just a lot of projects that either our customers can’t buy us or we can’t compete in that. And it’s, it’s a, it’s a real, it’s a bummer when we can’t work on a project or with a customer that, that needs what we have, but for whatever legacy procurement we can’t, we can’t work.

Antoine Walter:

Do you have sources to recommend, to keep up with the water and wastewater market trends?

Megan Glover:

I love Twitter. I actually, Twitter is my go-to when I just, when I want to just kind of know what’s happened in the Waterworld. I love Twitter. And if you follow me, you can probably follow on Megan Siegel over all of the folks in water that I follow. And then, you know, I think they’re great. They’re great, you know, trade pubs out there that are probably very obvious, but I think podcasts and Twitter for me are, are very much the sleepers of where you’re going to go to find the real trends.

Antoine Walter:

It’s interesting that you do this combination of podcasts and Twitter, because actually the only other of my guests who answered Twitter, it was Adam. It sounds like a pattern. I have to say to me, Twitter is a, is a riddle. It’s difficult to, to follow all of that, but for sure I’ll add your Twitter hashtag and username. See how not professional of Twitter. I am in the footnote of the episode and I’m going to give it a try, thanks to you.

Megan Glover:

I’m a terrible poster, but I enjoy the following. I need to get better at it, but I always get caught up in what do I, what’s the right thing to say that someone would care about.

Antoine Walter:

So last question for today, would you have someone to recommend me to come on that microphone and to be hopefully as awesome as you?

Megan Glover:

Oh gosh. You had some, Oh, you, I mean, you took everyone. I, that I are normally my go tos. I will tell you let’s stay on the theme of communications, the rogue water women out of Texas. If you’ve not connected with them, they they’re revolutionizing how utilities communicate with their customers. So there again, the rogue water is their agency name and happy to put you in touch with them personally, but they are super superstars on that. Let’s see Louisville water. They are again, when we think about branding, branding, tap water, they have really a, they are the case study and kind of the one that everyone goes to Kathy Bailey, if you haven’t had Cathy Bailey from, from Cincinnati is a hoot and literally the godmother of, of all things innovative in managing water and managing a large system at that. So I’m sure I could mention so many more, but there are three awesome women for you right there.

Antoine Walter:

Well, you see, I promise myself to not ask that same question to all of my female guests, because I feel it like a burden to put on you. So I didn’t ask about women in water, but I’m glad to see that there’s a pattern in your recommendations. Megan, it’s been really a pleasure to have this this hour together and yeah. Talk to you in five years or before. Whenever you have your next milestone, let’s have a talk.

Megan Glover:

Let’s do it. This has been such a pleasure. Thank you so much.

Other Episodes:

FREDsense: Revolutionizing Water Quality Monitoring with Biosensor Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 7 May 2025

Swirltex: Revolutionizing Wastewater Treatment with Bubbly Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 30 April 2025

Blue Foot Membranes: The Next Evolution in Water Filtration

By Antoine Walter | 16 April 2025

Echo River Capital: Pioneering the Future of Water Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 3 April 2025

1001 Fontaines: Engineering Sustainable Water Access Through Social Entrepreneurship

By Antoine Walter | 22 March 2025

Amazon’s Water Footprint: Tech Giant’s Quest for Water Sustainability

By Antoine Walter | 19 March 2025

Turing: The AI Revolution Quenching the Water Industry’s Thirst for Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 26 February 2025

Altillion: Pioneering Digital Intelligence for Water Asset Management

By Antoine Walter | 6 February 2025

Flocean: Pioneering Ocean-Based Water Solutions

By Antoine Walter | 15 January 2025

Botanical Water Technologies: Harvesting Liquid Gold from Plants

By Antoine Walter | 4 December 2024

The post What’s hidden in your tap water? Don’t worry, your utility doesn’t really know better! appeared first on (don't) Waste Water.

BOSAQ is a very ambitious Water Scale-Up aiming to develop innovative and future-proof drinking water solutions.

This episode is part of my series on (successful) Water Entrepreneurship – check it out!

What we covered:

How recycling water and energy in one of the earth’s most remote places (Antarctica) led Jacob to found BOSAQ

How the biggest challenge to overcome the lack of access to drinking water might be political

How bottled water companies’ marketing can and shall be replicated in the water industry

How building a water treatment unicorn involves taking a lot of risks and regularly passing quite close to bankruptcy

How BOSAQ started with only a Business Plan and a Flemish Grant to cover the company’s first 6 months

The fascinating experiment the company enabled, where a restaurant’s toilet and kitchen wastewaters are 100% recycled to be bottled and served back at the restaurant tables

How Jacob attempts to beat capitalism from the inside

How dreaming big is a duty as an entrepreneur

Water cost, IoT, Technology Transfer and so much more!

… and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨  

Teaser:

Infographic: Jacob Bossaer – BOSAQ

Resources:

Send your warm regards to Jacob on LinkedIn

Have a look at BOSAQ’s website

is on Linkedin

Antoine Walter on LinkedIn

Full Transcript:

These are computer generated, so expect some typos

Antoine Walter:

Hi, Jacob, welcome to the show.

Jacob Bossaer:

Thank you very much. We’re really pleased to be here.

Antoine Walter:

So I have many questions for you. Hopefully you have some answers as well, but I have to start with something. I had Matthew silver on that podcast and Ravid Levy who shared me some stories about Antarctica and that’s the very first thing I saw in your path and in your company description. So you also have something to do with Antarctica and if I get it right, it’s almost the source of your company. So can you tell me a bit about that?

Jacob Bossaer:

Yeah, absolutely. I graduated as a chemical engineer from university of guns in 2011, but in 2010 they asked me if I wanted to go to Antarctica. No, didn’t ask me. There was a, there was an application for water expedition in general, Antarctica. I didn’t know anything about water, but I wanted to go to Antarctica. So I just applied for the job and I got in the last rounds. But didn’t choose me to choose the other guy there. It was just two left because he was more experienced with water, obviously. Cause I didn’t know anything about what they didn’t know. I just said I did know about it, but I didn’t. So I couldn’t go. And in 2011 I signed my contract, my first contract with Dow chemicals, chemical company, obviously chemical engineer to start in September and in July the same year.

How Jacob Bossaer started his career in Antarctica

Jacob Bossaer:

So I signed that contract in April and in July the same year, they called me back from the Antarctica organization and it asked me if I wanted to go with Antartica anyway, cause like I didn’t want to go anymore. I was like, Oh sure. So I called the Dow and it, they allow me to start later four months later because summer season in Antarctica is four months from November till February. And it was my first job. So I went off, went to Antarctica as water expedition engineer I got to the station and it was literally like, this is your installation. Good luck. And I was like, Oh, how I’m going to do this. So I, I read a lot. I work like a full first three weeks of the mission and I managed to start it up still don’t know how, but I think, because I didn’t know how the system work.

Jacob Bossaer:

It worked because the system that was there had never worked before. It was very bad managed. It was very bad designed. It was never operational. And because I didn’t do, I took a lot of risks, but sometimes luck is in your side basically. And the system worked, I went back four times to Antarctica always in the, in the summer and Antarctic summer. So that’s from the jump the February. And in the meantime I worked in a chemical industry and I I switched jobs. So when I went on Antarctica, I quit my job. When I came back, I got a new job. So that’s for four years. And the last time I went was as expedition leader for the, for the Belgium government, there was a big quarrel about the station with the, with the one who constructed and then the owner Belgian state.

Jacob Bossaer:

And he asked me to resolve the issue. It was very political. So I was actually actually in the middle of a war. I was fighting a wall for the government, which was not my war, a bit naievely. I was very young, was the youngest of the team and still leading the team. I had four cabinets where the defense was with me healthcare science and another cabinet and four experts. It was very, a very big adventure. Cause we flew to South Africa, we stay for a while. We have to negotiate with the company that was a working together with the person that was in Isaiah government, the bad guy. So it was a lot of intrigues, basically politically as well as with the ambassador. And then we flew to Antarctica with a big illusion it’s a freight Blaine from the Russians and went to Nova Scotia, which is the Russian state from there flew 350 kilometers East to the Belgian station.

Jacob Bossaer:

And first they didn’t allow us to get in the station because of the quarrel. So we had to negotiate, finally goes in and then we would go to an illegal set up air space on Antarctica because I’m that it cannot be used for tourism. And they were setting up a tourism base. So went there and the pilot tried to land twice. And then they told us they couldn’t land. But the bias was part of the company that colluded with the opponent of the government. So it’s very dodgy. Yeah. Okay. We didn’t learn. So we went back and then we flew to the Norwegian station. We stayed there for night and then he flew out with a private jet charted by the government. It was a unique experience. To be honest is a really nice, it’s a very different way to travel, but it’s something you can get used to, I suppose.

Jacob Bossaer:

And then I got back to South Africa, it was a trip that costs a lot of money, but it’s taxpayers’ money. And I was not fine with result because the result was actually that the government made a lot of mistakes and they just threw it in the trash because they weren’t, they didn’t want to publish it. And then I said, okay, this is not my fight. I don’t want to be involved. So I, then I stopped working for Antarctica cause I worked for the former guy, worked for the new people. The foreign guy was we installed again. But I thought I said to myself, this is not what I want to do. I want to make a real difference in the world. And because I was technically involved very deep into the Antarctic station, princess Elisabeth as it was called, I started my own company because the particular thing about the station is that it runs a hundred percent on renewable energy. I was thinking if you can recycle water, because that’s what I did recycle the water in one of the most extreme environments in the world you can do it anywhere. And that’s how the idea evolved to BOSAQ, which is the sustainable water company, where we provide decentralized supply of drinking water with the means of renewable energies. So that’s actually the starting point for me,ufor BOSAQ.

How Antarctica was Jacob Bossaer’s inspiration to create BOSAQ

Antoine Walter:

So basically you, you learned everything the hard way and you were thinking if I’m able to do it the hard way I can do it in any kind of other environment in the world, it’s going to be easier. Probably even if still challenging. What was the temperature in Antarctica?

Jacob Bossaer:

It’s actually okay. It’s between minus five and minus 35 minus it’s summer. So that’s but it’s actually quite okay because it’s dry. It’s really dry the climate. It’s one of the dryest in the world. So if it’s minus five, you can work with your t-shirt outside. No problem at all. If there’s no wind, you burn immediately. Cause the hole in the ozone layer is the thinnest over Antarctica and New Zealand. So you get very, very, very careful, but it’s actually a very nice environment. We were in the mounts, super beautiful. I went there, I went with the, with the snow scooter. We did hiking albinism 80% of time. It’s a without clouds. It’s 24 hour sun obviously. Cause in the, in summertime there it’s a beautiful, a beautiful environment. There’s also for me the first and last time that I experienced silence. It’s very strange as driving with it with a motorcycle.

Jacob Bossaer:

Well it would snow scooter over the ice planes. I stopped and I walked for a few hundred meters and then I sat down and the only thing here is your breath and the cracking of your clothes. But as only you don’t hear wind cars are not trees that it was true. You don’t hear birds because there are no birds. You don’t hear noise in the background from things that happened. It’s a hundred percent science and the force of nature is so overwhelming and such simplicity. It’s almost empowering, but it’s also, it makes you feel very, very small. It was a really, really nice experience. So power of nature. Yeah. Very, very clearly present in Antarctica.

How BOSAQ is a physical treatment company despite Jacob Bossaer’s background

Antoine Walter:

You’re a chemical engineer, which means if you look at the water treatment world, there is a full part of it, which is made of chemicals and which are almost chemical way to treat water. And if I get it right, your solution has little to do with that. Is that a paradox or did you have an epiphany?

Jacob Bossaer:

I don’t think it’s a paradox. What I do think is everything is chemistry. Because everything consists out of atoms molecules. So everything is chemistry, but you have the good chemistry in the wrong chemistry because I think chemical industry, although from a public point of view, they may be not sustainable. It’s actually the industry that makes most things sustainable because the most of innovation, new products, new, more sustainable biodegradable prize, they come from the chemical industry. But I think it’s more a public opinion thing rather than the realistic thing, what chemical industry does. On the other hand, you have the bad chemicals saying that really polluting chemicals and in our solution, should we make sure that we avoid these chemicals? So that’s where the bad chemistry basically is being avoided. And our solutions are not chemically based are physically based, which is obviously a lot more sustainable than a physical chemical, a water treatment plant, which we don’t do, obviously. Yeah.

How Jacob Bossaer launched BOSAQ

Antoine Walter:

So w what was your start with BOSAQ? Was it like, I have that cool process, which I saw working in Antarctica, let me replicate it. Or what was your first act?

Jacob Bossaer:

When you start as an entrepreneur, nobody teaches you how to do them. So you’re very naive. That’s the first thing from a technical point of view, it was quite okay. Although I knew very fast. I lack the skills to do what I wanted to do. So the first thing I actually did, it was networking and network a lot, a lot, but a lot of people in Belgium to make sure that I knew the right people to go to. And the second thing I did is writing a business plan. Now, a business, nobody reads that, but it’s very good to make it because you overthink things you always never think about. So it was a good exercise for me. And I found out that from writing a business, I said, I’m not going to be able to do this. I’m not smart enough. I’m not the technical Einstein basically.

Jacob Bossaer:

So I need some money who helps me to do this. And then I asked a friend of mine with whom I studied, but he did a, she was always the best in school. So he was also a Laureate. I don’t know how to said it in English. He was the best in school. And he also won a prize for his master thesis. So he’s a brilliant guy, but he’s also a very he has also a very high IQ, so he’s very good with people and I call him and he just came back from seven months of world traveling and told him, I need you. Do you want to join the idea that I want to, I want to set up. And he said, if you can make sure I have a certainty of six months I’m in. And we worked together on a subsidy from the Flemish government. We got the grant and we started off at the day. We got the grant, he quit his job. And two days later he was sitting at the desk with me working on the idea that we that we are doing right now being decentralized drinking water supply. That’s a nice story.

Antoine Walter:

Is the Idea, the technical thing you’re delivering or is the Idea your, your vision of the impact that you want to have?

Jacob Bossaer:

Yeah. The idea is obviously the technical part, because that’s where it comes from. But like I said, you start very naively now, drinking water, even more than just water is a very political product. And that was my Navy. I thought, yeah, drink when everybody needs it so easy, the market is there. So let’s start a company. And then you bump against the boundaries, which are the political ones. And that’s where the technological Idea evolve to a visionary idea. I think because I think the vision of BOSAQ is one of our strongest selling points. We do not sell technology. Although we consider ourselves a technology company, not as well as utility company, which is a big difference. So we develop patents, develop new technology. We look at new ways on how treating better, less chemicals, less impact, less energy consumption. So all these things are really important to us, but I sell an Idea, an Idea of having drinking water available for everybody.

Jacob Bossaer:

And that’s also what you have to sell when you talk to governments and the political gain from providing drinking water to a community is quite high. So you have a good leverage there, but it’s really the vision that you have to remove to the people that want to get elected next term. So if you get that vision over to them, they buy into it and your technology has to be good. It has to be on top. It has to be the best. Why, because you’re working with public health and for yourself as a company, if something goes wrong, you’re to blame in your company, especially when you’re young and your startup. And you’re not very known if you do one bad project, you’re out of the market immediately. So we are obliged to ourselves to make sure that our products are topnotch. So we see yourself as well as product leaders or product leadership is the main goal of the company set up basically. But it’s not that we sell. It’s really the ID of providing in a sustainable way, clean drinking water, which is safe for everybody who drinks it for a longer period of time.

How BOSAQ uses similar marketing strategies than bottling water companies

Antoine Walter:

So this clean drinking water has a name for you. It’s this premium drinking water. I mean, that’s what you find on your website. And let us start with a definition. What is premium drinking water? Because when you say that to me, you know, it sounds like, an add campaign for bottle of water company and that it’s premium because that’s what you should give to babies – I’n really extrapolating here. But your take is obviously very different.

Jacob Bossaer:

Yes and No, because we also have a bottling water company, which I’m going to go into a bit later, but the word premium, I think it’s necessary to communicate it’s marketing obviously. But what we do with our technology provides the best quality of drinking water. The problem is that 80% of Europeans do not trust water from the tap 80%. Yeah. Which is huge. Belgium is one of the worst countries concerning drinking water consumption from tap water, most Belgiums buy bottles. It is the same in how does the complete opposite. So it’s really country dependent.

Antoine Walter:

What is their concern with it?

Jacob Bossaer:

Not safe,medicines in it or drugs or whatever, just perception. And that’s also, this is due to the fact that the marketing of the bottled water industry is very fierce. Because if you think about it, a bottled water company, that’s not a water production company, it’s a water transportation company. And if you look at it like that, you get a completely different view on what water is, because what we do with our technology, we make water that’s a lot more controlled than the water comes out of the ground. But the perception is obviously different because the marketing machines behind these companies are huge. They, the, the money they throw at it is enormous, but I think there’s a shift. There’s a shift in, in people understanding that, yeah, it’s ridiculous to transport water from one source all over the world. And I’m going back to the bottled water.

Jacob Bossaer:

We do. We provide premium bottled water for now only in the high-end hospitality market. So what we do, we build actually a very small drinking water factories. We put it in a hotel and the water in environment can be sea water can be river. Water can be rain. Water can be ground. What? It doesn’t really matter. You need a source of water, but it can be any water. We’re going to purify it up to a standard, which is actually a hundred percent H2O. So pure, pure, pure water, which actually not very healthy because you need minerals. What are we going to do? We’re going to add minerals again, but we bet on technology that we can choose what Reynolds we add. So we can make San Pelligrino. We can make Perrier. We can make any kind of water we want. We can even make water for sport.

Jacob Bossaer:

With a lot of magnesium or for children with a lot of calcium. So we can do whatever we can alter the taste. We can alter the content of the water. So we can really play with the health benefits of certain minerals in water. Then we’re going to bottle it in glass or metal. So no plastic you’re going to close it, or we’re going to seal it as a premium bottled water. We’re going to provide to the customers in the hotel. Customers drink at the bulk, comes back to an installation. It’s cleaned onsite, it’s refilled, re-sealed, re-capped on site. And what you actually have done is eliminated a hundred percent of your transport of water. And we become therefore our production company instead of world transportation company. So the CO2 footprint is gone, but also 40% of the costs of bottled water is transport also gone. So you have a more sustainable product, which is cheaper than the conventional product.

Jacob Bossaer:

And that’s what I’m saying before. Also in the dark here at GF Piping Systems, if you provide a sustainable solution, make sure it’s also economical, viable, and that’s what we exactly do with this concept. Of course, this is a concept that BOSAQ is not focusing on and it’s a concept we tested on Tomorrowland twice. It had a huge positive feedback. Huge. yeah. Then inquiry that 99% of people were very positive about the concept. So we knew, okay, this is something. And now we have one client, South Africa, it’s a high-end eco resort where we applied this. And now it’s more for technical augmentation to make sure that technology behind it is robust, very robust. Then we can really scale it up, but it’s going to be another company part of the BOSAQ group, obviously. And that’s also where premium, of course, it’s a marketing word, but it’s really to make people understand premium is about the water quality, it’s not about having a big name like spine Belgium or San Pellegrino in worldwide, or, Perrier worldwide, they call it premium wise. Other one, not premium. It’s just a concept of quite, it’s just an Idea. And the water we provide is premium. And most what, even that one, it is premium water, but drink water companies don’t market it like that.

How BOSAQ delivered an amazing direct reuse demonstration project

Antoine Walter:

What’s interesting is that if you look at bottled water, not so long ago, it wasn’t a thing. They made a big marketing Fort and they imposed it, that it didn’t know the, this, I would say terrifying figure as a water engineer of 80% being afraid of, or having concerns about tap water. But when you think of it too, you’re using the same weapons and you’re saying, okay, you want to put that on that marketing level, let’s do the same. That’s a very interesting way. I didn’t intend to do it in that sequence of thing, but I’ve seen one of your references and you’re going to tell me if it’s the most extreme one, but where you have a very short loop to reuse a water. And that is at a restaurant in Belgium. If I, if I’m right, is that the same kind of bottled water or is it another different concept that you’re developing?

Jacob Bossaer:

No, it’s exactly the same note. That project was a showcase project. It’s not something that we want to commercialize. So it was with with funds of European union and more to showcase technology. But what we do there is actually be going from Blackwater, which is toilet water and waste water from the kitchen. We recycled a hundred percent up to bottle of water again now from a quality point of view, no issue at all. So we also, the Belgian food administration was involved to make sure that everything was stable. There’s no issue, but it just obviously the mindset people that, Oh, it’s coming from that. I’m not going to drink this, but that’s just a psychological thing. And just to show what is possible,

How Jacob Bossaer aims for Impact with BOSAQ

Antoine Walter:

Which brings you back to the marketing element. If you look at Singapore, they market, the NeWater, because it had to have a name and they have this awesome beer, which is brewed from this NeWater. And that’s what we say, Hey, look, it’s even tasty. So yeah, exactly,

Jacob Bossaer:

Exactly. I think I’m raised as a person that is against capitalism, but to beat capitalism, you get to become a part of it. How strange that sounds. Now my brothers see I’m from big family, six grand sisters. We all have that social incentive in us because my parents, they really make sure that we, that we are people that care about the nature care about the world. We do something back. So my brothers, a lot of my brothers, they set them against the world as a capitalistic system where people make too much money for just small percentage. And I thought I’m going to do differently. I’m going to use that capitalistic system to make a difference, but it’s only because when you get big, you can make a real change. Now it’s good. One, bruh. I don’t say that my brothers are doing something wrong, but they give something to charity.

Jacob Bossaer:

They don’t get himself involved in the real consumption industry. And I said, no, I’m going to use capitalism to make a change. And I think the biggest fear I should have is to not follow the same capitalistic route, that a lot of companies that earn a lot of money do and stay true to myself, my own beliefs, but I have I’m very well surrounded first in my family and the people that work within BOSAQ. Everybody that works within BOSAQ has to comply with the 10 commandments of BOSAQ. And the 10 Commandments is a framework of BOSAQ, a value framework where the idealistic view on the world is a necessity to work with BOSAQ. So everybody’s a bit naive in a good way that we want to change the world for the good. And if you have that as a company in your DNA, I’m a hundred percent convinced that we can make a change for the good, I never start a company to become rich.

Jacob Bossaer:

I start a company to make impact. And that’s what BOSAQ is about. We want to make impact, but we’re not scared of earning money. Obviously, if you want to grow, if you want to grow your business, if you want to have more impact, you need to grow. So you need to have money to do that. So we are earning money. I’m also the first to say that people have to pay for drinking water. It’s not free. It’s a human basic, right? Absolutely. But it’s not free because food is also human basic right. And it’s also not for free because you have to do effort to make water drinkable. And there we come to the value of water. What value does water have? Because for a farm it’s different than for a company that use a lot of water in a schooling system. If the company, if they don’t have culinary cat operator company, and the people have to be laid off, but if you take too much water of the river for your cooling station, ships can’t run anymore.

Jacob Bossaer:

So everything is connected. And what is, it is a very good example of how interconnected everything is, because if you don’t have water, you don’t live. So it starts already there. And every advancement in this world in industry is water based. And you see it from back in the history is big civilizations. Like the pharaohs in Egypt relied on fresh water from the Nile to make sure that they became a big power. They had food that it could, it’s always connected with the way of living. The luxury we have in the West is based on water in the end. And it always comes back to water, and I, of course, it’s easy to say I’m working in water, but if you think about it, how important water is for everything we do, yeah. Then you cannot underestimate the value of it.

How Jacob Bossaer plays with the rules of capitalism to do good

Antoine Walter:

It’s a very interesting take, which reminds me of a conversation I had with Michael Stanley Gallisdorfer on that same microphone where we were saying how important he was explaining that when you bring back the rivers in the cities, basically you bring them to their, their, their ground essence. They, they will build around those rivers. So you have to see those rivers again. And it was also citing a number of which is that every dollar you invest in water actually has a $4 feedback. So return on investment in water is pretty high. And what you just told me about this take at somehow capitalism reminds me of, you know, the monopoly game, the monopoly game has been created by someone who was really against capitalism and basically the game was set so that people understand capitalism so that they can fight against it. Of course that vanished, and now everybody’s just playing monopoly. But just to say, it sounds like there’s a kind of filiation with what you do, which is very interesting. There’s one thing in your business model. And I don’t know if that was here from day one, because you say you started with your business model, but a portion of what you’re owning goes into a special funds. Can you tell us something about that?

Jacob Bossaer:

So we set up a foundation which is called Water Heroes, and it’s a foundation that supports really the communities with people that we don’t have anything to provide for themselves. And we provide technology to provide clean drinking water. So it’s 10% of the profits that goes there from the company, of course, a young company, so we don’t make profit yet, but every time I’ve got talking about Antartica, I get paid for that, that money goes through to the nonprofit. I wrote a study for the BMW foundation. They pay quite well, goes to the nonprofit. And we also have clients that for CSR reasons donate to water heroes. And Water Heroes is really, it’s actually a result of my education from my parents, doing something good back for the world, if you’re successful. And it’s exactly what we do. But that 10% is not something that is lightly taken that decision because in our shareholder agreements with our investors, it’s there.

Jacob Bossaer:

So they can’t say if there are dividends, 10% of this will never go to them. It will go to the foundation. And I think if we get investors and they say, Oh, we don’t agree with that. We don’t want this world. Then they are not the right investors. So we obliged everybody who financially is involved within BOSAQ to give something back to community, because the fact that we can live the way we live is a gift, basically, compared to all these other people who don’t have it, 2.2 billion people, not having access to clean drinking water on a regular basis. We have that. So do something back to the community. And it’s also sustainable concept in a sense that Water Heroes, is only getting its funds from industry. It doesn’t get a funds from government. It’s an absolute no-go that we get subsidy of something for projects.

Jacob Bossaer:

So again, it’s a sustainable setup. See, because if Water Heroes becomes bigger, it buys its products at BOSAQ. It’s geared for Bosak from a commercial point of view. But if a bossa grows, then what he has grows as well, because they get more funds from Basak. So it’s communicating vessels. And I think this is the, is an ideal setup of charity because it’s sustainable concept. You don’t rely on a government that pays you every year, that same amount and if there’s a crisis in government, on pay anymore, you can’t. So no, we a hundred percent said, no, this has to be single concept that piece itself. And I believe in this because if believe every company worldwide does the same after, as we do, you have different worlds, a hundred percent.

How Jacob Bossaer shaped BOSAQ’s company culture

Antoine Walter:

It’s interesting because you are applying your company culture to your employees, which I have to leave with this 10 commandments of both sack. And you also have the similar setup with your investors. So we see that you, you said you started from the business model. Still the, this impact element is really, I would say the vertical thing that unites everything you do. It seems to be like that. At least

Jacob Bossaer:

It’s real and it’s, I want it to be real. You know, what happens a lot, especially with bigger companies is that they buy themselves the green label. We don’t want that. We do not brag about being sustainable. It’s part of our business. And I believe that any young business that starts now has to be sustainable and not brag about, Oh, how look, how sustainable you are. Now, for example, companies like Coca Cola, they have to do that because they don’t have another option. They were founded when sustainability was not even an issue, but it’s very difficult for these companies to have that image as sustainability for us, it’s a lot easier. And I think it has to be part of our business base.

Antoine Walter:

It will almost be a crime. I mean, if you’re in the water industry and you’re not sustainable, it’s that you do extra things in order not to be sustainable. So it would be strange in that world, but nevertheless, there’s such sustainability where you can do a bit of something and say, Hey, what I do is already sustainable. Or you can say, Hey, I actively do my part and you are actively doing your part so

Jacob Bossaer:

Well, I think it’s important as well. The first thing we asked GF Piping Systens as a supplier of us, especially when we’re going to bigger orders with them is we ask them, can you send me your sustainability charter? And not because I want to, yeah. I want to make a point obviously, but also we, we want that we work with companies that also believe in that transition to more sustainable. Yeah, exactly. And that’s, for us, that’s a, it’s difficult as a startup because you don’t have that much weight. What do we order from GF Piping Systems as a startup? And that’s not going to be, I hope in a few years, it will be massively more than you have more power to oblige your suppliers to also walk the talk exactly. Like you say, but I think it’s a responsibility of process companies. We have to, to share this idea with everybody.

Jacob Bossaer:

And it’s also, if you want to go to a sustainable future where everybody has more rights than they have, now that it’s the way to go. The pure capitalistic system, like it is been operated for decades. I don’t believe in, I don’t believe it’s done. And also believe that the younger generation, which is the biggest part of population, people don’t understand. And it’s the biggest part. But I think in Nigeria is the average age is under 20. I think the 200 million people in Nigeria, I’m just saying, so the future is that the young and they have, I think they really understand what they’re have to do to make sure that their future is secure for them and their kids. And so I’m very positive about it, but yeah,

How to build a monster in the Water Industry

Antoine Walter:

You mentioned the startup elements and on that same microphone, I had to talk with Gaetane Suzenet there, I would say a couple of weeks ago. And she was mentioning that in the water world, there’s a lot of startups, a lot. I mean, understand me. It’s not IT but still there’s quite a bunch of startups and there are some majors and in between, there’s not so much scallops. And she was saying, that’s a reason for that is that whether it was not your ambition from day one to build the monster, or if you’re really innovative enough, chances are you get bought by a major. When I listen to you, it sounds rather to me like your ambition is to build a monster – monster in a positive way. So let’s say build a unicorn. Absolutely.

Jacob Bossaer:

Yeah, absolutely. And I’m, I’m not afraid to say that I started this company not to have a company of 10 millions of turnover. Sit on my couch, relax, earn good money and be happy. That’s not what I intended to do. I told my Peter who started with me, the company, other, if you do this, we’re going to do this good. So we’re going to go for impact. And that’s you see that old decision? We think when the company, we always in three years and a half, we’ve been almost three times bankrupt. Not because we’re doing bad, but just when you investing hugely in what coming, this is what you have to do as well. And that’s of course, to grow as fast as possible because for us growth is equals impact. Not equals more money on our bank account. Of course it’s a part of it, but you need that to invest, to grow again and its impact.

Jacob Bossaer:

And that’s what I want. I want to have an impact, I want to have a real impact worldwide, and we want to become number one worldwide in decentralized drinking water supply, because we think we have a very good concept of providing drinking water to all these people around the world at the cheapest, total cost of ownership. And I want to just have that impact. And this is my dream is I’m a dreamer. I think it’s also important as an entrepreneur to dream, but my dreams are huge. I want to be the first having a drink, one installation on Mars. It’s it’s a real dream! It is going to happen? I don’t know, but it’s a dream. And I think being able to dream and something for my mom always said, dream, dream, dream. And I keep dreaming. And I think the dream is for me, that’s what I want. I want to reach you. And I dream big. It’s part of me. It’s part of the company. It’s part of the people that work in BOSAQ. And I think we also have a unique product, basically drink water. It’s such a huge market. So you can dream big. It’s not like you have a very niche thing that only a few people in the world would need. You have something that everybody needs every day, 7.5 billion people today. And in a few years about 10 billion people. So it’s something big, so you can dream big I believe.

Antoine Walter:

But “big” in that industry is also is quite special because when you think of it, the biggest company in the world, even now, even bigger, if you consider that the number one might be buying the number two, but it’s still 5% of the market. So, so big is still, I mean, it’s a portion of, of such a huge cake that is still tremendously big, but it’s not like you, you were mentioning Coca-Cola Coca-Cola they have Pepsi against them. And if you take the two of them, they are probably 90% of the market. So it’s a bit different in the water world.

Jacob Bossaer:

Yeah, that’s true. But that’s also, if you look at the market value of Coca Cola and you look at the market value of drinking water, that’s also a huge, huge difference. The thing is that not everybody drinks, Coca Cola, but everybody drinks, water, everybody. It’s not because you like it. It’s just, you need it. There’s a difference. And for me, I don’t want to be the biggest. I want to be the biggest to have impact. And if it’s only 40 million people, I provide drinking water. It’s 5% of this 850 million people who never have extra drinking water and say, you have a hundred companies who do the same as me. Then we have solved already a challenge that’s there. So it’s not from the megalomaniac point of view, that I want to be the biggest it’s from an impact point of view.

Jacob Bossaer:

I want to be the biggest. I want to have as much impact as possible to have as much reach as much people as possible because I can assure you the biggest joy I feel working on this company is when people come to you almost crying and are so grateful that finally, after all these years, they have good quality drinking water and that it can give them to their kids in a safe way. Don’t get sick anymore. And people, they come to the almost crying as the best thing you can have as an entrepreneur, you really feel you have made an impact in the community at the same time you’re growing your company.

How Jacob Bossaer wants to contribute to the UN SDGs with BOSAQ

Antoine Walter:

But what did we fail as an industry that in 2021, it’s still a blue ocean and the blue fields that there’s, I mean, now I’m talking in almost an aggressive way to look at things. I mean, when you, when you say 2.2 billion people not access to drinking water, of course it’s a terrible story to them. But in terms of marketing, that’s a huge market. It’s a blue ocean. So many people you can do so many things. How is it possible when you think that water is, I mean, you cannot live without water. Every civilization has traces of water associated to the civilizations. It’s really entrenched in our behaviors and in our lives. And still it is a blue ocean. So why does the water sector need a BOSAQ

Jacob Bossaer:

Mindset? It’s like I said, we don’t sell products. We sell a mindset. If I can explain to a government that buying at BOSAQ is winning the next elections, then you have an impact for them as well. It sounds a bit wrong, obviously, but it’s actually what we do. You gotta be honest with what you’re doing. A politician is elected to make sure to provide for the people that elect them. And bringing, especially de-centralized requests, but is very visible. It’s a huge impact in society so people can connect the good impact on society to the political level. Now, what happened with water for decades is first of all, it’s not liberalized. So private companies were not involved in the industry. And it was also treated from an NGO point of view, which I don’t have nothing against any NGO, but a good example, Rwanda stable, a lot of NGOs like to operate there.

Jacob Bossaer:

You have 10 villages, they all need water, what happens in NGOs? They go to this 10 villages. They all have their own drink, water system. One fails. The other doesn’t can’t follow anymore because he doesn’t know the technology. There is no support. There is no, there’s a lack of coordination. And it doesn’t work. Now I talk for example to the government Liberia as well. They have a huge challenge with regulating the market because they are not powerful financial, powerful enough to provide drinking water themselves, but you have 500 players in the market. The pride week, or with the result is that their quality, lack of quality, lack of supply, lack of, and if you involve, I think the approach that we do is not going bypassing the government, but use the government to create an impact is different. That business model is different and maybe it’s not going to work so far.

Jacob Bossaer:

It really worked for us, but he’s not going to work, but I believe it’s the way to go because you approach the drinking water from a completely different point and it has, and it has been done. What it has been an oil was government only, or it was a NGO, but the combination private government with that clear proposition as we have is quite new. You of course have partnerships, but that’s government because government is leading there. They want to have their seats political, but that’s something we don’t do. We do politics in our sales process. But as soon as we have the contract, we work as a private company providing good quality drinking water to provide the people there. And I think that concept is not new, but it’s new for the water market. And I think, yeah, the liberalization of the market as well comes with innovation. That’s what you see that the market is changing. Yeah.

Antoine Walter:

So basically, you’re reversing the scale effect before you would have a myriad of players and one central government to CT, which is centralizing everything in which saying, Hey, I can leverage my scale to make something efficient. And what you’re saying is that they are probably not doing that thing efficient themselves. But if you are a company that does that scale thing, that you are the ones serving all of them, then you have that scale effect. And on top of that, you do that efficiently.

Jacob Bossaer:

Exactly.

BOSAQ’s technologies to produce drinking water

Antoine Walter:

Let’s go to the technical side of things. We’ve alluded a bit to it because that’s came from your, your Antarctica years. But what is your system? What is it all about?

Jacob Bossaer:

Yep. So our system is membrane based memories. There are around since seventies and since the two thousands are commercially viable, because before it was way too expensive was not robust. Technology is not reliable. Now it is very reliable. It’s technology is used. It’s almost a maintenance. It’s not mean, but it’s used a lot more than it’s ever been used. And for us, it’s at this stage, the best technology to provide a high quality drink or at all at all time, and just kind of membranes ultrafiltration gravitation nanofiltration versus Moses microfiltration as well as pre-treatment. But what we’ve done is first of all, we made a system that’s a hundred percent off-grid, which is quite unique. So we don’t need it just from the grid or from a generator to operate our systems. And we made a system that’s a hundred percent independent from human interaction, which is of course important because for example, Suriname is a country that is the kind of, we have the biggest contracts running.

Jacob Bossaer:

This is the middle of a jungle. And if it breaks down, you can’t send an engineer from Belgium up there. So you have to make sure that everything is built robust and is built also that you can do from a distance, which we do every installation worldwide, it’s connected to internet, even station. And we can see, so it is always there. Or it’s through cell phone network, which in most countries is available even in the middle of the jungle in Suriname. And if you don’t have it, you have satellites. This is how we make sure that at all time have control, because what happens a lot is with projects that are approved are installed. Insulation is installed. Companies left raise after two, three months, nobody knows about it and it doesn’t operate anymore. So also in the concept, what we do is three years of maintenance is included. If a government doesn’t want to, we don’t provide systems. So it’s obligatory.

Antoine Walter:

I have a strong take at the market and everything has, has its clear rules, it’s very interesting!

Jacob Bossaer:

The technology transfer is a part of that three years, because if you provide new technology to country and engineers are not trained in it, they cannot sustain it. So in these three years or engineers, train engineers in the country to make sure that they can operate the system without us very important. A second very important thing is our contracts as well. I’m not going to say they’re always going to work out, but that’s at least the aim we obliged governments to make people pay for water, which is not always obvious. As soon as people pay for water, the value of water is there. Again, we come back to the value. Is there people understand that’s the most amazing part. People are really willing to pay. There are really, even the poorest one are willing to pay for good quality drink workers. They don’t want their kids getting sick. 4.5 million people die worldwide per year because of drinking water issues. Most of them are kids. So they’re really willing to pay for that. And these two things already technology transfer and payment of system is a huge enabler of us for governments. It also helps governments who installed, why there’s a payback of their capital investment as well. And there’s a payback of operational costs as well. Like I said, it’s not technology we provide. It’s a concept that we provide.

How BOSAQ aims to reduce Total Cost of Ownership

Antoine Walter:

You have a strong claim in what you said, which is that your total cost of ownership is lower than any other solution. How do you measure that?

Jacob Bossaer:

The thing is we had also discussed today about decentralized systems. Decentralized systems are not very common yet as a structural solution to drinking water. So we compare ourselves obviously to the next best thing, which is centralized solution. Now, if you compare to centralized solution for remote areas, that’s a, no-brainer the cost of a piping is with the 150 and 350,000 euros per kilometer. And it’s quite independent from country because for example, the one that you have more more difficult access to heavy machinery. So it costs more. So that cost is real. So there the cost there is really, yeah, there’s no brainer. And then of course you have competition that works also in decentralized. But if you look at the price or price is quite expensive, but if you look at the total cost of ownership, being that our systems work, operate for 20, 30 years, and then you’re going to also calculate the maintenance of it, which is almost nothing. Then your total cost of ownership is super low and that’s what we aim at. So we want to be product leaders. So when we want to be the Porsche of the drinking water installations, but with the idea of making sure that maintenance is very low and the robustness of the system is very high and that’s where we, why we claim we have the lowest total cost of ownership in the market.

Antoine Walter:

Two thoughts here, my first thought is that goes a bit against the trends, which is to say let’s do water as a service. And actually it’s the same thought to twofold go together. If you were a pure capitalist, you would say, I have the lowest total cost of ownership. Let me finance the installation and let me bill everyone a service because I know that on the long run, I’m going to be very profitable.

Jacob Bossaer:

That’s also what we want to go to. But if you want to do that, if you do that, now you take government again, a way because

Antoine Walter:

Government, they have the capability to invest, but not really to pay. Yeah.

Jacob Bossaer:

Yeah, exactly. And that’s also because the what as a service model is something that we do. For example, a bottled water concept is what, as a service, they pay per liter of water. They don’t pay an installation installation hours, but that’s also because it’s completely different setup with governance, a lot more difficult. You know, there are three reasons why we sell to government. First of all, is the needs, but the need 95 countries worldwide need it. The second is network. Do you need to know the right people obviously also on a political level and that there was financing now in Western Europe, that’s not really an issue. Governments are financially powerful enough to pay that, but in a lot of developing countries, that’s not the case. And if you want to finance a project and you want to do two, what is the service? There is no insurance company is going to ensure that transaction, if you do it through a lump sum saying the project cost 5 million, 10 or 20 million, then they’re going to ensure that transaction.

Jacob Bossaer:

And for us as a startup company is only the only way to start up because we need that cash in to make sure that we can evolve to Water as a Service business, because the idea would be then that people pay directly to assist in the money, comes on our account and we be back the investment also pay for operational costs, but then you skip the government again. And that’s something I believe that’s dangerous, why I’m actually convinced about social capitalism. And what I mean by that is that the basic needs of humans should be public owned. Drink and water. Electricity. Telecom is also a basic need these days because yeah, connectivity is super important, but it should be privately run if you know what I mean, because probably run, you’ll get efficiency. You really look at the cost. You, you have a lot better. You have more flexibility on the employees market. You don’t have these people that are fixed in a job, but it should go back to the committee and that’s why we involve governments. It, so it’s an opinion basically, but I believe in that opinion, because in the long run, I think drinking water is so basic. It’s so elementary that it should be public owned.

How knowledge transfer and operation contracts ensure long-term success

Antoine Walter:

It’s interesting because with your model of this three years of operation, it’s almost like you’re doing, you know, before for these big projects, there’s a build, operate transfer. And a, and that’s usually is for really huge infrastructure project. And you’re taking the same concept just in a very small scale and say, Hey, you can do exactly the same. You build it, pay for it upfront. And then three years long, we train new people. And after it’s yours, use it for the next 30 years. Exactly.

Jacob Bossaer:

The thing is, there’s also a reason to that we focus as a company on project 5 million euros and plus. We do project between 1 million, five years, and we don’t want to do project less than one mate, unless they have a strategic importance. For example, we do two project now with the biggest drink water company of Belgium, they’re a small project, but of course with strategic point of view, very important because they have a big market that we can serve in a longer run. The same. Now in Suriname, we providing for a gold mining company for cause they have communities that the workers that work for the mine and they provide all the social needs, schooling electricity, drinking water. And that’s also small project where we do that. Obviously you get into that market because strategic strength, the concept of BOSAQ is a centralized approach on decentralized drinking water supply.

Jacob Bossaer:

If you go, like I said, the example with the Rwanda, the 10 villages, then different installation, that’s not efficient. But if you do as one company ten different villages, you have this advise approach, this interest in every village, but you can control centralized. You can centralize your maintenance, you can centralize your spare part management. Then the cost per unit goes drastically down. So it’s actually also for bigger projects. And if you were in government a project for 3 million euros for government is super small. Even for developing countries. The project we talk about are, are actually 8 million plus. Why? And that’s again, the financing part banks don’t want to find anything project less than 10 million euros because not, it’s not beneficial for them. Countries know that as well. It’s indeed small scale at the all hands it’s big scale, but it’s, we combined the two, basically for us, it doesn’t make any sense.

Jacob Bossaer:

If a country asks us, I want one village, one installation, then we say, no, we don’t do that because that’s not the impact that we envisioned. That’s not how the model is built or systems as well. And that’s a technical a thing: our systems are build modular. So every module in the container, in the, in the wherever it’s set up, it has its specific goal within the system. So we have a standard product with standard modules. But if you have, for example, mercury in the world, which is quite common in in in Suriname, then you put a module in that takes preferentially, mercury out of the water. And that’s an option. Solar, if you want solar energy, that’s an option. If you want hydro energy, that’s an option. So you pay for it. As you have to relate actually to the car manufacturing market, where you pay a standard car with options.

Jacob Bossaer:

That’s what exactly what we do as well. And we make it standardized. So that means that we don’t have to re-engineer our product for every different situation, because we just put a model in or out. But if you look at the production capacity, then now it’s very expensive to develop. But from a point of production, it’s a lot cheaper because you can read the big series. So it was the same and you just built them out. And their both modular from a hardware point of view, but also from a software point of view. And all these modes are connected with intermediate blocks, software blocks that connects everything. And that’s of course more expensive now, but on a long run, a lot cheaper. And that’s we want to go, we pay now between five 50 cents and one, 1.5 Euro per cubic meter. We want to go to 30 cents per cubic meter and is definitely reachable with the concept that we’re developing. So it’s built for being big.

How every water project is the same, except that it is totally different!

Antoine Walter:

It’s amazing because you know, if you talk to water professionals, they usually tell you every project is the same, except that it’s totally different. And I think every single company out there in the market has tried to standardize. And I would say that almost all of them, I would have told you all of them failed, but apparently you’re an example, which makes me no than say almost all of them, but that’s always been the ambition to say, there’s things you can standardize. But at the end of the day, the water is different at every single place in the world. Exactly. So how can you standardize that?

Jacob Bossaer:

But you can, because it looks like you have the same product, but it’s actually not because the different models in it, but the modes are standardized. Okay. So you just, it’s like a building blocks. You make building blocks and you make, let’s say didn’t building blocks, but within building. But if you only need five, you have the millimeters, you really can make a huge variation of final products basically.

How Jacob Bossaer wants BOSAQ to standardize its elemental bricks

Antoine Walter:

So you standardize the Lego bricks, which you can build whatever you want. Makes a lot of sense. You mentioned that you can work off grid without energy. What is powering you? Is it solar power?

Jacob Bossaer:

Yes. So we provide ourselves solar power and we have partners for wind and hydro. But all systems can be also put on the grid because in some committee, for example, Romania, all communities have electricity. They don’t have water, drinking water. It’s also more sustainable. It’s already there. Then you don’t have to put solar panels because then you invest twice for exactly the same output. We’re not a big fan of that. If it’s not necessary to where we want to have more sustainable renewable energies. But of course it’s also the client at the sides and every system can also be put on a generator, for example, for remote areas where you have sometimes a energy breakdown, they say are, we don’t need the solar panels because we have energy. You have an energy breakdown. They can’t put a generator on it, but that’s again an option, something we don’t promote, but it’s an option. So you have the,

Antoine Walter:

But if you run on solar panels and if someone wants to shower at night, how does that work?

Jacob Bossaer:

It’s a battery system is so you have, you have backups. So the system is is always built with backup. And also it’s not purification at the moment. So there’s always a buffer capacity. And that’s also, that’s an engineering calculation, how much you have to provide for a certain community. So that’s always there. And the water is always, re-disinfected also also there we make sure that’s more sustainable because normally ultraviolet lights is a good way of disinfecting, but the mercury lamps, you already hear it. Mercury lamps, not sustainable, heavy metal. You don’t want that. So we use LED UV is brand new technology. It’s more expensive, it’s a lot more sustainable. It’s also more robust, also ideal for our applications. So also there in new products, new things that we find on the market we implement in our systems.

How to Build to Last

Antoine Walter:

You mentioned that you have the absolute certainty, that your products will last 30 years yet you don’t have yet those through to use as both sides. So how can you be so convinced that it’s going to last?

Jacob Bossaer:

Ha I think it’s experienced. You’re not never certain if I’m dead, honest certainty. Exactly. But it’s built in that way. And of course it’s a lot of experience in the market. What lasts long or it doesn’t, this is the reason, for example, why do we work with GF Piping Systems? Because we know it’s quality products. We do not put Chinese 20% of the GF Piping System price products in our systems because you know, it’s going to fail after, after one or two years, maybe even earlier. So we make sure that the products that we build in are high quality, where there’s a lot of experience with it or for long period of time that we know, okay, this price is going to last for a long time. And also the system is also built to make sure that if, for example, a pump fails, it’s very easy to build that in and out.

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Jacob Bossaer:

So it’s very flexible in that sense. So can you claim that? No, of course we have to sell and it’s, it’s a marketing thing. We are the best in the market. We use the best products to make sure that the installation is robust and lasts for a long time, because I can’t find the same installation. No, not the same, but they say does the same, same, let’s say 5,000 liters per hour of drinking water in China at 20% of the price. But I’m a hundred percent sure that that will fail way long before ours will fail. That’s a hundred percent certainty. So you see in the mind it’s a frustration from the market as well. It’s a big frustration as well. You hear that a lot. Oh yeah. There was just a few months and it’s done. It doesn’t work anymore. Yeah. We can’t have that also with the name of the company. We don’t want to have that obviously.

Antoine Walter:

So you’re back to this total cost of ownership aspects that’s yeah. Yeah. Usually are you can’t afford to be cheap. I mean, that’s, that’s, you’re just saying last question for me in this deep dive, you, you mentioned this this element of the digital side of things that thanks to the phone network. You’re able to look at everything from remotely, but what do you exactly look at? What is, what is it that you’re monitoring? What are you key indicators

Jacob Bossaer:

Quality flow temperature, humidity,

Antoine Walter:

Quality, meaning?

Jacob Bossaer:

Everything! Like we have developed also, it’s also be patented it’s it’s a quality sensor in line, which is a lot cheaper than what you have available on the market. And for example, our systems are intelligent. They know, for example, when the river has more organic content, the installation will run at a lower pace to not burn the, the, the membranes and necessarily, and also the information that we take is locked and the idea is not. So we are now in a process of hiring a software engineer will develop AI, to make sure that the information that we get in from the logging system can help us in optimizing our design to circumstance. For example, if it’s very humid, then we can see that a pump. It has needs maintenance after one year and very dry, only two years. For example, it’s just an idea.

Jacob Bossaer:

I don’t know if that’s the case, but that’s just an idea. So you can optimize your design, but you also can predict your maintenance. And it’s also a huge cost saver predictive maintenance, also it’s IOT connected. So you need that data to read in, and that’s the reason why we have so much data. So also data that you, from a first point of view, why would you need that? Why would you need your humidity in the country that you’re operating at? Well for that design optimizations corrosion. For example, if you see temperature, which with humidity has a lot faster corrosion on this element, okay, we’re going to change that to plastic or, or, or, or Inox, whatever or, or any material that’s better for that circumstances so we can optimize our design. So that’s a bit the idea.

How Machine Learning might be a next evolution for BOSAQ

Antoine Walter:

I don’t want to throw buzzwords at you, but that sounds to me like an ideal field too good for machine learning. If you see that pattern, then probably this is going to happen.

Jacob Bossaer:

Exactly. Actually, I think that’s also the Case. I think there’s so much technology available. Use it. Why wouldn’t we use it? It’s I also believe I’m a hardware guy. I believe in the, the huge need of hardware provide drinking water, but I’m not an aviator. The thing is software is a main drive for any company. If you want to be on top, if you want to be on top of your game all the time, you need to know what you’re doing and how do you need to know what you’re doing is data mining in your own systems. And that’s, it’s a necessity. It’s not even nice to have. It’s a necessity for us to make sure we are on top of our game for the coming years. And we can keep innovating the system that we have, because like I said, it’s not a Fitbit that we work with memory in technology, maby in 5 years, we do complete different technology because we believe that’s not technology is better, more energy efficient less burn on the, on the environment, whatever. So I think, and you have to evolve and you also have to dare to evolve with that. And then you need data. We’re an engineering company. We just can’t say, Oh, we think it’s going to be better. No, no. You have to know it’s going to be better. Yes or no. So it’s trend that we also follow as a company. I think it’s necessary. It’s yeah. As things are moving very fast. So why not use it?

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Antoine Walter:

Yeah. You mentioned this element of the membranes that still a recent technology in terms of acceptance. I had Graeme Pearce on that microphone who explained us how, when he was traveling around the UK, in the nineties and early two thousands, people were laughing at him and saying in membranes, I’m never going to be a thing. And look at us 20 years later. I mean, it’s just everywhere. So yeah, you never know what’s going to be the technology of the future. I’m sorry. I said it was the last question and I keep throwing questions at you, but I have, I promise you this time. It’s the last one. It’s about, you know, the acceptance of the market. There is something, there is a common pattern within the water market. There’s always this. Okay. It might be good. It might even be 20% better than what we already know, but what we know, we know it and it’s been working that way for 30 years. So why shall we change? Is your chance here that you are addressing a market where there’s nothing, so you’re making better than nothing in any case?

Jacob Bossaer:

Yeah, partially I think I think the biggest chance is the developed world because they’re, the process are already a lot more installed and, you know, in Suriname, they don’t have water in decentralized areas. So any solution is good, basically. So it’s a lot easier to get that to them. But for example, we work in Belgium on the hybrid system, meaning centralized, combined, decentralized to have a hundred percent coverage of drinking water within Belgium. That’s our process, very political. They have the Holy house. They don’t want to kick in. So, but that’s, you know, if you think being an entrepreneur is easy, then everybody would do it. It’s part of the game. It takes a long time, especially with governments, it takes a long time and it’s, it’s a fight. It’s a fight that, and you keep on fight. I think the main characters of any good entrepreneur is perseverance.

Jacob Bossaer:

Never give up. Yeah. I heard a quote a few weeks ago and I thought it was a brilliant quote, is winners or losers never give up? I like that quote. It’s a very good one because it’s what it is. Like I said, we were almost three bankrupt. We’re still floating. And maybe next year we’re bankrupt, you know, you don’t know, but my mindset I’m going to make this work and I’ll make sure that we’ll have that impact and we go for it and we keep going for it. And even at the last thing of hope that we could have, I’m going to grab it and we’ve got to go for it. And that’s what I think entrepreneuring is about. There’s a bit of a healthy, healthy mind obviously, but perseverance, I never stopped.

Antoine Walter:

If you want to listen to a cool episode about entrepreneurship in the water words, it’s also a Belgian company as well, Wim Audenaert was my guest here from AM Team. It was very inspiring. You have a clear path which is to become a unicorn. When is that going to happen? Just to know when I scheduled the followup with you

Jacob Bossaer:

15 years. Yeah. So five years we’re going to grow massively and then it gives it it’s it’s processed. So now we, a project company will want to evolve to product company and they want to evolve to what is a service company. Like I said, difficulties for going to what a service company immediately is. First of all, cash as small companies, a lot more, if you want to raise 50 million, which you would need for Water as a service company, big scale, then we can’t raise that right now. But also it’s also more logical to make sure that we now focus on the technology, meaning building the building blocks. So it’s a product company. So if a country says, we want this, okay, this is on the shelf. This is what we need for this kind of project. But the project is productized. So the project actually products. And then we got to Water as a service. So that was going to take us some time. So the first five years now is product company and then one is a service company. So that’s the Idea. And in 15 years I want to be there. And I want to sit here and tell you that we are the biggest worldwide than decentralized doing drinking water supply. So fingers crossed a love, heart work. We know that. I also know it’s dangerous to talk about these ambitions, but I don’t want to,

Antoine Walter:

It’s refreshing to be honest, it’s really refreshing to hear that.

Jacob Bossaer:

Yeah, but I, I think I also need that. I need that goal to set for myself to make sure that we follow up on those. And, you know, I rather die, trying and failing that never tried. So that’s for me a yeah, part of my personality, I guess,

Antoine Walter:

Let me throw a closing thought that you, before we switch for the rapid fire question, because I said it was the last one, and this is my third last one. But when you see a company like clubhouse, which is raising $4 billion with I mean an audio social media, which is not even one year old, and you say on the other end, you you’re solving an issue, which is a life issue for billions of people. And you say, it’s going to be impossible to raise 50 millions.

Jacob Bossaer:

It’s not impossible, but very challenging at this stage. And we don’t want to put the effort in it at this stage also because a, the downstream maturity should be a little bit higher. If we do that, is it a frustration? And it’s not a frustration I’m afraid about that, but I just don’t from healthy might not understand it because you can’t live with our Facebook. You cannot live without water, but still the value the company

Antoine Walter:

You cannot live without wifi, come on!

Jacob Bossaer:

It’s just perception that we are willing to pay 500 years for a cell phone. We not willing to pay five years a year for water. It doesn’t make any sense, but that’s just the way it is. And let’s hope that we can raise awareness about the value of water in the coming years, more than it’s now, but it will never be like a cool iPhone or whatever. And so, yeah, but the thing is, is what, like the bottle of water we sell, we sell that in a half a euro a liter and what we sell to governments a half a year or per cubic meter. So that’s a thousand times more. And just the perception because the bottle looks very cool. It’s a very nice concept. It’s a marketing product and people are willing to pay

Antoine Walter:

That don’t get me started, you know, I’m a son of what our engineers that have been raised into this belief that tap water is the best thing there is there wasn’t, it will ever be. And when I was student in Mulhouse, we had the tap water who had kind of a taste and people wouldn’t drink the tap water. So the city of mirrors, what they did is they tried to explain to the people that the taste was because there was this a terror attack and you had to put chlorine into the water. And that was the reason for the taste, but people kept, they didn’t want to drink that. So the city took the exact same water, bottled it and sold it, and people bought those bottles. And that, that tells you just sometimes how we can be stupid. But, but yeah, as I said, don’t get me started. And it’s my third closing. I propose you to switch to the rapid fire questions.

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Rapid fire questions.

Antoine Walter:

So in this last section, I try to keep the question short and you can try to keep the answers short, but I’m not cutting the microphone. If you have something more to say, fair enough. My first question is what is the most exciting project you’ve been working on and why

Jacob Bossaer:

Antarctica, absolutely. Because you come back to yourself, very rudimentary. If you talk about log down, I can assure you Antartica is a full lock down. Now there’s nothing there. But it’s, it was the inspiration of my professional career, the started Bosak. So yeah, that’s for me, absolutely. The project that inspired me to,

Antoine Walter:

What is your favorite part of your current job?

Jacob Bossaer:

Travelling. Well actually quite a lot, because the good thing about what has its necessity. So it’s also considered as a necessary business, so I could travel quite a lot, but I love being content with different culture. I love being in with different backgrounds. I love being called with different technologies, with different people. I love that. And that’s the, I think the best part of my job.

Antoine Walter:

What is the trends to watch out for in the water industry? Don’t tell me decentralized treatments?

Jacob Bossaer:

No, I think since I started with BOSAQ, I think also at that same time no, because of both suck a wish, but not the water sector is changing for the good, and I think it’s going a little bit further away from government from a technological point of view, in sense, innovation in water is so much innovation is still possible. The low hanging fruits are still there. So I really believe that the trend is that water is going to be hot. It’s going to be sexy. It’s going to be a product that I believe is going to be also a very important one. Also in the, in the [inaudible] like all was still, Elizabeth will go down. I think what it will go up and they’re referred to as the blue gold the new oil, whatever. And I, yeah, think that water is going to have a more public, it will be more publicly debated and it will be a very grateful market work working, I think, for the future. Yeah.

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Antoine Walter:

I had a great discussion with Nicola Lei Ravello on that microphone about what a future is being traded in Wall Street now. And it has its pros and cons, but it certainly shows that the interest in what I am, what is the thing you care the most about when you’re working on a new project and what’s the one you care, the least

Jacob Bossaer:

What I care most about is the impact drivenness it sounds a bit cheesy, but it’s really important for me. I want that push. We do have a real impact. What I care less. It’s a difficult one. That’s always the most difficult one.

Antoine Walter:

I can award you a Joker card if you wish.

Jacob Bossaer:

Yeah. I’m going to take a joker for that.

Antoine Walter:

Okay. Joker card. Do you have sources to recommend to keep up with the latest market news?

Jacob Bossaer:

No. one of the worst things about me is I don’t read a lot. I read a lot of politics cause it’s necessary for my job. But I don’t read a lot of books. I don’t read a lot of topics I do read, but it’s very random. Linkedin. there’s lot of things that I follow, but I don’t read it even my own articles. Cause I have articles that I write in my name. I don’t get the reading all of them. So I’m not a good source for getting the reading the article,

Antoine Walter:

But so your best source is people because you want to meet people.

Jacob Bossaer:

Yeah. That’s true. Absolutely. Yeah. The best source is people, that’s true. That’s true because the thing is as well. Yeah, I’ll say to my engineers as well, engineers are a breed. I’m an engineer myself. So back for myself. So I can’t say that there are a breed that wants to reach perfection, but the market doesn’t demand perfection, the market demands a product that’s that works and then you can optimize it. So yeah, people are the best way of making sure that your product isn’t optimized profit or market. Yeah, absolutely.

Antoine Walter:

Last question. Would you have someone to recommend me that I should definitely invite on that same microphone

Jacob Bossaer:

In water? Yeah. Pieter Loose, obviously I think from the initial point of view, he’s doing great work. I think as well in Belgium, especially we have to be grateful for what he’s doing because it makes also what a big topic in Belgium. And it makes us more important than we’ve ever been before. We’re not competitors, not yet at least, but we are adding to each other. And I think yeah, he’s, he’s a great if you look, if you see what you’ve done in 10 years, it’s amazing. So a big respect to him and a big congrats. He also went just to the stock market, his company, so amazing. You have some other companies like [inaudible], which is focused on very  challenging waste water from  the pharmaceutical industry  has also quite some success now in Belgium. And then you also have George break he’s from  hydro Volta. Hydro Volta is a company they want actually a great grant by EIC, from European union for desalination. So new technology with the Italian issue, it’s a lot more energy efficient than memory technology. It’s electric dialysis system kind of thing. He has a great story because he comes from Syria. He had the flat, the war  start up again in Belgium, lost everything and has a great company is also a really growing fast startup, also going to scale up. So also very inspiring guy to talk to him.

Antoine Walter:

Awesome. Well, Jacob, it was a pleasure. I could have taken another hour of your time, but I have to be cautious of your time at some point. So thanks so much for your time and yeah. Talk to you when you hit the next big milestone. Yeah. Let’s hope. Thanks a lot for that.

Other Episodes:

FREDsense: Revolutionizing Water Quality Monitoring with Biosensor Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 7 May 2025

Swirltex: Revolutionizing Wastewater Treatment with Bubbly Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 30 April 2025

Blue Foot Membranes: The Next Evolution in Water Filtration

By Antoine Walter | 16 April 2025

Echo River Capital: Pioneering the Future of Water Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 3 April 2025

1001 Fontaines: Engineering Sustainable Water Access Through Social Entrepreneurship

By Antoine Walter | 22 March 2025

Amazon’s Water Footprint: Tech Giant’s Quest for Water Sustainability

By Antoine Walter | 19 March 2025

Turing: The AI Revolution Quenching the Water Industry’s Thirst for Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 26 February 2025

Altillion: Pioneering Digital Intelligence for Water Asset Management

By Antoine Walter | 6 February 2025

Flocean: Pioneering Ocean-Based Water Solutions

By Antoine Walter | 15 January 2025

Botanical Water Technologies: Harvesting Liquid Gold from Plants

By Antoine Walter | 4 December 2024

The post How to Save No Less than 2.2 Billion Lives (aka Frozen 3) appeared first on (don't) Waste Water.

 BioCastle is an environmental biotechnology company that encapsulates nature by developing and marketing an intriguing technology: the Small Bioreactor Platform.

What we covered:

How BioCastle develops the smallest bio-reactor in the world

How its simplicity makes it a perfect fit for multiple wastewater treatment applications

How this full story starts with an almost midlife crisis for Ofir and pressing fish farming challenges for Gabi

How Gabi and Ofir might be considered bacteria breeders

The hurdles of starting commercial expansion in the middle of a Pandemic

How shelving bacteria opens a whole new world of targeted actions

How the adoption curve can be challenging for a young water treatment company

… and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨  

Teaser:

Infographic: Microbial Encapsulation

Resources:

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Full Transcript:

These are computer generated, so expect some typos

Antoine Walter:

Hi Gabi, Hi, Ofir. Welcome to the show. Well, it’s not every day that have the chance to speak with two guests. So we have two guests today for the price of one. So wonderful. Let me start with that with a postcard. And actually of course, with two postcards and the first postcard comes from Beers Sheva and that’s you, Ofir? What can you tell us about your place?

Ofir Menashe:

Beer Sheva is in the south west of Israel in the negative way. This is a desert area. It’s a nice place. My parents live here, so I visited them right now.

Antoine Walter:

So I guess in a desert place, you probably have water stories. We were going to dig a bit deeper into that in a second, but you Gabi, you are in Modein.

Gabi Wolkinson:

Yeah, a lot of history here, a lot of the ancient digs we’re smack in the middle between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. It’s a fairly new city, 20 years, maybe

Antoine Walter:

When it was preparing for the discussion, I was looking at both of your path. And I was wondering what brought you together? What made you cross your lines? And you gave me a little glimpse into that Gabi some seconds ago and that has to do with, with fishes. So what’s the story.

Gabi Wolkinson:

It’s a wonderful story. Actually, for the past 10 years we’ve been working, I’ve been working in the fish industry, trying to initiate and initiating actually different types of recycling, agriculture assistance, fish, pharmacy recycling the water. And we built one of the biggest fisheries in the world. Actually today we’re growing a barren Lindy. It’s about 20 minutes South of where our field is located at the moment. And through trying to initiate fish farms or RAs systems in the world, I came to the conclusion that we need to find a technology that would be fit for a recycling, the water and fish system, but fit for smaller growers, traditional growers. Because today, if we look at RAs at that industry, then we see that all the systems are very big because in order to be profitable, in order to make an efficient system, you need to grow large amounts of fish and all the traditional growers that used to grow fish in their backyard stopped growing their fish because of all kinds of sustainable issues or economical issues.

Gabi Wolkinson:

And that’s when we found a fuse technology, the SBP capsules, which we’ll talk a lot more soon. But what we did was we took the technology and we built a small fish farm inside a caravan. And we actually drew Sebring. It’s a seawater fish from a very small fingerling, about a half a gram all the way to 500 grams. And it was very, very good. I mean, the chef that we brought it to really liked it and it was a good process. So we learned a lot out of that. And to today, we are taking that forward

The roots of microbial encapsulation

Antoine Walter:

Now in a separate company. So it starts with a good process and a good fish. And in that story Ofir you’re the technical guy. So you came with that SBP, which is the small bioreactor platform. And we’re going to dig a bit deeper into that in a second, but how did you get interested in that technical aspect of things?

Ofir Menashe:

Oh, well this is a different story. First of all, I remember the meeting with Gabi. It was three years ago, this meeting I’m really remembering it. We sit in a Televiv in Israeli towers and we will talk about the technology. And then Gabi  tell me that if he thinks that the technology might solve a major problems in a recirculating aquaculture systems. And from that point, we were going together. And so this is the story about me and Gabi and about the technology. It’s I think it’s all started when I was at age 34 and decided to do my PhD studies, just changing, you know, changing the way in the middle of life. You want to do something else. I want to change to do something like entrepreneurship, to invent something that will be useful. So I left everything in my life and started to learn in the university to conduct a PhD studies at the faculty of biotechnology engineering at the Technion, the Israel Institute of technology.

Ofir Menashe:

And I was feeling very hold because all around me was a young people. And I was the older one or the older guy I finished at age 38, about 2009. And in Israel, there was a significant crisis in water. We still did not have desalination process. And we have a lots, a sequence of draughts. And once I say that, I want to cooperate with the water industry. And I’m a microbiologist it’s immediately taken me into the road direction of water and wastewater treatment. So I started to check out this work, water, working out this technology, working, and I look at the literature and I found that everything is well known. You have a lot of bacteria and know how to degrade it, everything, almost every contaminant that we know, even absorbing radioactive elements. And this is really was depressing because I said to me, okay, what I can contribute to the world at this at this point.

Ofir Menashe:

And I asked my friend, which is a water engineering. And I tell him, tell me about what you, you are seeing in the water industry. Does it it’s really significant as the academic literature is describing this world that we have all the solution, everything is good. And he said far away the academic is just provided some data, but you can not implement it into the industrial world. Now, at this point, I understood that we have a technology gap between academic and the industrial sector. And at that point, I understood that if I will find a technology that will bridging this gap, perhaps I have I have a place in this world of intrepreneur option. And I dig in more about, okay, what happened, why, why it’s not working. And he told me that once you are, there is a wonderful bacteria that know to join everything. But once you are putting inside the wastewater treatment plant, it’s vanished, it’s diluted, it’s eaten by other microorganism. It’s not adopted and it’s vanished. It’s not working. So in a Petri dish, it’s my work. But once you take it to a big, huge water body, it’s vanish, you don’t have the capability to use it. This is the starting point that I figure, what is the problem here?

Antoine Walter:

If anyone wants to feel like, you know, empathy towards a factory, you can go to bio castles. So your company’s website and I found this video of that poor bacteria, which is, which is just perfect for just doing its work. And then there’s just this devil predator who comes and eats that bacteria. And I’m like, no, no, please don’t kill the bacteria. I never thought I was going to feel something for a bacteria. And then I saw that video, the story, I didn’t want to cut you off, but, but then it was something I wanted,

Ofir Menashe:

As you’re saying, because I feel the same. And I said, okay, let’s try to figure the bacteria like a man. If you want to employ someone, you need to provide in some security, you need to provide him some condition that he will be able to work properly. And we don’t provide it. Now, the second thing after I figured that I understood that I need to invent something that will protect, will provide a castle to protect those bacteria that I want to use. Now, this is, was the invention. It was not simple because at that time I was thinking about only out to wrap it with a microfiltration member. Well, microphone, titration member is a physical separation. It’s kind of with a holes, little holes that is smaller than the bacteria itself. So it’s not allowed in the bacteria to transfers, but it’s allowing other components, which is smaller than the bacteria to get out and in. Okay. And in that time, there was only a membrane. That’s like a paper, like a paper sheet, and I need something structural. So this is what was the invention itself to create something spherical as structural and the bacteria will be inside.

Microbial Encapsulation as a way to reverse engineer larger scale treatments

Antoine Walter:

It’s very interesting because you, you reversed engineered microfiltration or ultrafiltration because usually you have that separation step, which has managed to take out the bacteria of the water and to clean the water. And you said, no, wait, I don’t want to take the bacteria out of the water. I want to protect the batch, the bacteria. And by the way, nobody gets your name by your castle because you’re building a castle for the bacteria and you protect the bacteria. I mean the good bacteria from the bad bacteria so that they can do their work while water is still flowing through your castle, which is here at Maura, a capsule.

Ofir Menashe:

Absolutely you’re right. We are protecting the bacteria, but not a usual bacteria, not the natural bacteria that is growing inside the wastewater treatment plant, but in bacteria that especially bacteria that we are using, which can be not growing inside the wastewater treatment plant, but this bacteria have the capability to degraded contaminant, industrial contaminants, such as phenols, such as the fat and oils, such as a benzene and other components, which the bacteria inside the waste water children then are not able to do that. And the idea is to have a sufficient biomass in order to conduct this process, to conduct this treating process. Now, if I returning back to my story, I created a castle around the bacteria and I said, wait, I have a castle. Now I can bring some furniture inside. I can bring some nutrients I can bring out of things that may accelerate all the process and make the home better for the bacteria. And that point I understood that I built the smallest bio-reactor in the world. Actually, it’s like a, took a wastewater treatment plant and shrink it into one capsule about 2.5 centimeter long. This was the idea.

Antoine Walter:

So basically it sounds to me a bit like a moving bed bioreactor on MBR, but just the other way round. So it’s not a cheap where you grow the biofilm on the chip. It’s a chip where you grow the biofilm within the changing and that way you have a controlled environment.

Ofir Menashe:

Absolutely. You’re right. However, when you are using a biofilm on the field with the MBB out, you don’t have the control. What, which type of bacteria you have there here, we have the control, which type of bacteria we can introduce inside the capsule. We’re not, not only have the control of which type of the bacteria. We have the control of the bacteria, concentration, how much bacteria I’m putting inside the wastewater treatment plants. It’s according to how many capsule we put in, and also the position because they are very big particle. 2.5 is a big particle. And we put it inside the perforated cages. We also have the capability to control the position of the implementation of the biomass. This make us enable to create a new treatment process. And this is the innovation actually, especially for the industry for the industry itself. Now, if I may, I will explain what I mean, for instance, if an industrial client want to induce a biological treatment, what are you doing today?

Ofir Menashe:

You need to grow in a biomass. You need to separate it that way. With the sedimentation tank, you need to circulate it back to the bioreactor and you need to deal with the waste. Large. Actually you need a wastewater treatment plant. Isn’t it. With our technology, the SBP technology need only one chamber the bioreactor because the biomass already separated from the affluence. So you don’t need to send the mentation tank. You don’t have as a waste large because all our biomass is uploaded inside. So actually you need only one chamber and you don’t need to operate because the capsule lifespan is a two months. You only need to add a new amount of capsule. So this is a huge progress for the industrial sector, the water industrial sector.

Turning a CAPEX topic into OPEX with help of microbial encapsulation

Antoine Walter:

There’s many things to uncover in what you just said. Let’s start with the ends. Actually. You say that you’re turning basically a CapEx topic, which is I have to have a sedimentation step. I need to have a lot of things in, in my plan, the recirculation, I mean, everything you just listed. And you’re turning that into an OPEX question, which is every two months, my capsules are done. My bacteria have eaten everything they can eat. I need to replace them. But probably that means that you also have a balance to find between because in some cases, if the water is very easy to treat, probably your highly targeted capsules might be an overkill. I’m trying to find the pitfall here to be a bit of the devil’s advocate,

Gabi Wolkinson:

You’re forgetting though that if you do have all the steps and you don’t use the bio castle solution, then you anyway have your operational expenses. So you have to deal with your waste sludge and you have the electricity and you have your professional experts that need to deal with it. Whereas we are lowering those operational costs, even with the capsules, because you don’t have a need for the manpower that you need in a bigger system. The amount of oxygen that you’re going to have to push into the chambers is going to be less the space that you’re going to save and on and on.

Antoine Walter:

That’s a very interesting point. So sorry to cut you the manpower, because that, that was something that really impressed me in your various literature in marketing support, but also in what you just said is that it sounds very easy. So I need probably less knowledgeable manpower. Exactly. Is that right?

Gabi Wolkinson:

That’s exactly right. You don’t have to run the facility on a daily basis. You don’t have to have the people running the facility. It runs by itself. You have to come in and make the water checks like anyone has to do in any system. But besides that periodically, you’re adding in capsules. That’s all you’re doing nothing more, no trucks coming in and out to take the sludge away. No, no, no crazy infrastructure that you have to deal with and maintain.

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Antoine Walter:

Now, I’m going to keep my because you know, I’m a bit too enthusiastic about your solutions. So I have to be really the devil’s advocate here. I would see probably a scale effect because on lower size infrastructure, your solution sounds like, like really genius. You don’t need to have the skilled people around the plan to just pour in that at the right encapsulated bacteria, into, into your wastewater. And just every two months you renew them. But on a bigger scale, of course, you’re always going to have scavengers and bad bacteria that eat the good bacteria, but you also have the good bacteria that reproduce themselves in a huge tank. So you don’t, you have less investment into into that biomass. So I could see probably a limit and upper limits where both curves cross is that fair?

Ofir Menashe:

You’re right. You’re right. There is some limit. However, when you’re talking about large infrastructure, what we can do is improve the work, the capability to degraded. For instance, if your wastewater treatment plants F a limit capability of a daily organic matter that running inside, we can increase it up to by 20%. So we can work as an additive treatment, not stand along. As we described before, now, we can work as an additive treatment and increase the treatment field, meaning that you can extract much more from your infrastructure with our technology.

Nature is well done. Can we encapsulate it?

Antoine Walter:

I’d like to come back to something you said earlier, which was that nature is, is well done. And that there’s a bacteria to treat any kind of pollutants. Does that mean that you, you act like a chef, you look at what’s the problem, and then you find the exact good receipt of bacteria and they put the right bacteria in that water.

Ofir Menashe:

Yeah. You can see that like that. There’s we can see it almost like a pharmaceuticals that you have a lots of blends of materials that you can see what the problem is. And we can choose which type of bacteria to introduce. Sometimes we are using several types of bacterial, several types of capsules to put inside, think about that each capsule types or bacteria types, providing us independent biodegradable process, one process. And we can develop a lot of parallel processes, treatment processes. So we have unlimited power now. And

Antoine Walter:

Do your bacteria react to sudden changes in the effluent? If there is something which they are not designed for, how did you do the deal with that?

Ofir Menashe:

Well, this is a very good question, because we thought about it at the beginning and the design of the capsule and the capsule that sometimes the bacteria inside, they have several components. Do you remember that we are also providing the furniture for instance inside. So some of the bacteria inside, they have a place to develop a biofilm inside. So if the environment is still all style and you have antibacterial agent inside the water and they might reduce the bacteria inside the capsule, so you will have inoculated, you can inoculate it again, the capsule with the biofilm. And we have another component, which not all the time, I reveal that, reduce the toxicity of the environment and increases the compatibility of the environment to the bacteria itself. So it’s well, equipment castle is your castle reusable. No, it’s comes in a dry States where the bacteria is dormant when it’s not active. Once you put it in the water, all the particles become alive. So once you put it in the water, you cannot transplant it back into a dry state to inactive States. So at that point you have about two months of, by a small bioreactor to use.

Breeding Bacteria

Antoine Walter:

Does that make you people that treat water or does that make you people that, that breed bacteria

Ofir Menashe:

That’s that’s nice. I, what you want to answer that?

Gabi Wolkinson:

I think it’s both, there was no way to go around it. I think that even though in an MBR, a sludge treatment, you’re breeding bacteria. It’s the same thing. What’s beautiful in my eyes, as someone who’s not from the industry is to see how nature works. In any case. All of a sudden it occurred to me that the bacteria itself is already in the water with our help or without our help. Now, the question is how much we breed it. Like you say, in order to create more and more in order for it to treat the water problem is that we have no control. And with the SBP capsules we gain control. And once we gain control, we can minimize the amount of bacteria we need in the water. And you see minimize the amount of bacteria. Then you’re saving a lot. You’re saving manpower, you’re saving electricity, you’re saving on expenses. You’re saving on space. You’re saving on everything.

Ofir Menashe:

Actually. Now we can bioengineering the aquatic environment in the main of microbiology and the engineering process itself.

Antoine Walter:

I also something which, which is interesting, because you mentioned that the literature says that everything is done about bacteria and still you have some experimental bacteria. So I was wondering if maybe new compounds means new, new treatment that you need to put in phase of those new compounds. How do you develop those first? You develop new new bacteria. I mean, probably that’s out of the blue. You said like the right ones, but how important is it to, to keep adapting your bacteria to new types of pollutions?

Ofir Menashe:

Well, we’re talking about mainly in industrial pollutions that most of them, some of the bacteria are not familiar, especially those that you are using in sanitary, wastewater treatment plant in domestic one, they don’t have the time to biodegrade the bacteria itself, or do they still don’t know the contaminate itself in order to break it down? What we are using, we are using an isolate bacteria from these industrial zones. That’s also already been exposed to the contaminate of today or to the compound that we want to break it down. So they have all the mechanisms how to break it down and, and those bacteria we are putting inside the capsule itself.

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Microbial Encapsulation – Simple yet Powerful?

Antoine Walter:

So I think it’s, it’s very clear to me how that works on the technical side. I mean, it’s very clear because it sounds also very simple, which is of course, a strong benefit of your solution. Let’s talk a bit about business. Let’s say I’m, I’m your ideal customer. So first tell me who, who am I, who is your ideal customer? What is the sweet spot for your technology?

Ofir Menashe:

I think we should start by understanding that we treat biological contaminants. We treat organic matter in the water. So until we reached the stage of needing to treat lowering bod, that’s where we are. So we would be looking at if we’re talking about sanitary. So obviously most of the treatment in the sanitary or utilities it’s called would be biological. And we can, we have a lot of added value to those customers. Whether it be upgrading, scaling up their capacity or helping them reach a solutions for specific contaminants, getting better better results in their treatment, sharpening their treatment. The other type of a customer would be the industrial who has to treat water biologically. And you’re talking about food and beverage micro electronics that use a lot of water. And most of the industry even turns out most of the industry uses water.

Antoine Walter:

What is your ratio between new plans and upgrading existing plans?

Ofir Menashe:

I think that at the we’re talking

Gabi Wolkinson:

About two types of customers that are turning to us, one type has a existing plants, but needs to upgrade what they have. So they’ll treat their water to two, they get to a certain rate and then they don’t know what to do with it. It’s just too much for them for what they have. So they’re left with these big bodies of water that they can’t really discharge and they’re waiting for it to evaporate or for the contaminants to kind of dissolve by themselves, get out of the water by itself. The other type is I would call there would be industrialists that have solutions that they’re not happy with and need to do something and look a little differently at what they have. And I think that what’s driving things forward are regulations. All of a sudden the States are coming after the industrialists and saying, this is not good enough anymore. We need to, uh, get better results in your wastewater. And they’re left with the question, okay, what do I do now? And our solution is very good for them because it means that they don’t have to go into these crazy investments, building a big facilities. We fiddle around a little bit with what they have and create like a few set before a new processes for them in order for them to read their their needs.

Automating Plant Operation

Antoine Walter:

We’ve seen that those new processes might be easier and that’s a way to facilitate the operation of the plant. But how does that relate to automation? Because I guess it’s a cool thing if it’s easier, but if it’s automated, I guess it’s the next step. How do you to make your plant? Is it like two months sharp? That’s a capsule can last in water or does that have something to do with, with the loads coming into the wastewater straightened step to have any means to measure how much the capsule could still be treating in the future? I’ll do two major plans.

Ofir Menashe:

Yeah. That’s very, very interesting question because we need to experience in order lots of projects to know exactly how much time the capsule will survive in the water, because you have a sheer force you’re with other forces that working against the capsules and you have all the acidity in the water level acidity and other chemical elements. According our experience the capsules are stay about two months in the water working good. We don’t see any physical damage to the capsule. This is very easy because you see them cracked or breaking down. And this is our day. They finish their lifespan. And there is another things that’s very nice because the member itself is make of telos tell Rosetta, which is a kind of biodegradable. So we don’t leave any finger painting in the environment. So the capsule and their life and the particle are going for the water and breaking down by downstream. So all our operational is very simple. We don’t need to exclude the old capsule and put in, in return, put the new one. We only need to add a new capsule, and this is make the operational much more easy. And the environmental impact much more better.

What is the shelf of a microbial capsule?

Antoine Walter:

I’m glad you made that precision because I was imaginating, you know, PVDF membranes left in water. So talking with microplastics, that would have been kind of awful, but it’s leverage neutral once more. So you control STD tissue or control P H what is your control?

Ofir Menashe:

No, we don’t. We don’t have the possibility to control acidity in the water because it’s a very large water body. It’s there it’s required. So lots of chemicals, we are trying to adapt the bacteria into the environment as much as we can. Sometimes you need to challenge by itself. There is a wide range of the bacteria that it can challenge it’s. Most of the bacteria it’s from the range of 5.5 pH into a 9.5. So it’s very wide range if it industrial, and we have a non silica influence, we are saying to the industrial client that you need to have a Brett Rickman. One of the pre-treatment is to stabilize the pH into this range that we are talking about. Gabi . You wanted to add something here.

Gabi Wolkinson:

Yeah. I just wanted to add about the automation part that you would ask yourself. Okay. So how do you know exactly when the capsules break down and when you have to add in more, the procedure is very easy. What we do is we just add a half of the amount of the capsules that you actually need once a month. And then if you know that they break down every two months, you’re never going to be in lack of bacteria in the water.

Ofir Menashe:

And in that point, you are gaining two different sludge age inside the capsule, a young one, and an old one with their advantages.

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Antoine Walter:

So Akio for the automation part coming back to, to the business model, how, how is your business model working? Is it like a subscription model as subscribed to, to bio castle? And every month I get my new capsules, which I bought into water.

Gabi Wolkinson:

Well, what’s nice about the capsules is that they have a long shelf life, as long as they’re dry. So you don’t have to bring in an order once a month and wait for the capsules to come in and be worried that you’re not going to get supply. You can supply yourself in the next five years and with capsules, as far as we’re concerned and just leaving them in the storage and use the knives you need. We have clients that are interested in putting a capsules on their shelves, just for safety reasons. In case they have some kind of hazard in the water, they just add the capsules and know that they’re at that they’re safe. Another thing that’s very nice about it is the flexibility we’ve had people say to us, well, if we start working with the capsules and now we’re stuck, we have to work with you now for years. And I used to say, why do you have to work with us for years? If you’re not happy, you can stop tomorrow. However, if you buy a device for a million dollars now, what are you going to do? Then you’re stuck for years with a device that you spent a million dollars on with us. As long as you’re happy you treat, we treat your water and we get paid for it. You buy capsules, that’s it. It’s very, very simple, straightforward, flexible, and not to what we call it. A Catholic marriage, right?

Microbial Encapsulation, a versatile plant?

Antoine Walter:

Yeah. On the other end, if, if they leveraged the added value of your system and just build a simple and single tank, and now they wants to get rid of your, your solution while they need to, to build the full plant. But yeah, I mean, if you treat the water, you treat the water. So, yeah, but just to say, I’m still trying to keeping my, my, my, my devil’s advocate hat on a bit,

Gabi Wolkinson:

They postponed the investment. It’s just postponing the investment. The investment will have to come in now or tomorrow or the next day, or not at all. If you continue working with our treatment,

Antoine Walter:

How close are you to membrane manufacturers? Because, you know, I had on that microphone Haris Kadrispahic from LiqTech, who was mentioning that they were working on the way to add a layer of biology on top of the membrane. So to have the biology outside of the, the hardware membrane and know that companies like aquaporin are doing similar stuff, and you’re taking the opposite route, you’re putting a biological layer within the membrane. We’re just wondering if there are some synergies there to leverage between what they are looking at and what you are looking at.

Ofir Menashe:

Most of the, of, of the technology and people ask me about the clotting of the member. And if there is any possibilities of clotting the member and by creating a biofilm above the membrane surface. And I tell them that the membrane, our member is having a strong, negative charge or strong negative Zeta potential, which means it’s rejecting a biofilm formation because the biofilm itself, it’s also having a negative charge. So we don’t actually see any growth of biophilic on the surface of the capsule, but you didn’t ask me about that. You asked me about a different thing and no, we don’t have currently any connection with other member companies or collaboration in that case.

Antoine Walter:

So how would you grow your solution from there? Because it sounds like so easy. I mean, I’m even surprised that it’s not really, that’s a subscription model because I would clearly see that, you know, I have a pond with 15 fish just beyond my holes. I would say, Hey, I take the, your X, X, X, X access subscription. And I get my, my 12 capsules every month. And I’m very happy about that. But how do you grow from your, your position today? How international are you and how international do you expect to be and is sky the limit?

Gabi Wolkinson:

The major problem with what you’re talking about a subscription is that everybody of water is different. And then each one is a tailor made. So it’s not like I can say, okay, you buy the subscription and you’re set for life. It doesn’t just doesn’t work like that in this industry. And therefore you need to have a setup of engineers to back up the solution for each customer. We actually started our commercial life at the end of last year and decided to go international slowly, but it wasn’t working. It’s not working too well for us because the international companies are asking for help in different aspects. And, and we find ourselves working in Spain, in China and in Greece and in other places. So our business model is actually to we’re looking for representatives abroad. We have our eyes set on a few, but there is nothing that we are a hundred percent settled on. In the meantime, we’re taking care of the individual clients that we’re starting to work with and we’ll evolve from there.

Starting Commercial Expansion in the middle of a Pandemic

Antoine Walter:

It was probably not the easiest year to start shipping commercially worldwide when the full word is in lockdown. So I guess that doesn’t help. But you mentioned something very interesting about, it’s not like you, you said it’s for once and then nothing happens because we are dealing with natural stuff, which might be drifting over time. Does that mean that you, you take some samples on a regular basis that your clients send to you so that you tell them, Oh, you’re using the red capsules. You should take two additional green ones and two, I’m putting stupid colors on it. I guess you have scientific names for that. How does that work?

Gabi Wolkinson:

Yeah, I will answer for that. First of all, do you have a water analysis data we are asking for the water analysis data and try to understand what is the data that’s that’s they providing watch out? The problem is, secondly, we are asking for the process itself, what the infrastructure, what is the operational activity? The drought leaks, everything. We are actually learning about how they treat the water I’ll decline, treat the water. The second stage is to ask the client, what do you want to achieve? What is expectation from us? You want

Ofir Menashe:

To reduce nitrogen. You want to reduce Cod. You want, you want to increase capability. Office is in for fracture. After we are decided, what is the, the treatment target? Then we can start to think about our solution. Are we tailor-made our solution to his existing process.

Microbial Encapsulation – a perfect process for combinations?

Antoine Walter:

And I’ve seen a couple of studies on your website. So scientific studies about combination of treatments. Do you have like a preferred causing our sister or brother treatments, which should capsules work smoothly and synergistically with?

Ofir Menashe:

Yes, actually, let’s go to the basic. We are working side by side with activated sludge. For instance, this is one technology. The other one is two are trying to combine our technology with other treatments, such as a UV radiation, physical or advanced oxidative processes in order to increase an accelerated the biodegradation of compounds, especially the heart biodegradable one. And now there is another thing that is very interesting today because nowadays the analysis, the water analysis get a huge progress. And now we are starting to understand that we have a small amounts of compounds. We call them micro pollutants that although that they have a very small amount in the water, their impact upon the public health and nature are significant. I will give you an example. For instance, Orman sex. They were dial hormones that we are also decorated insight into the, our sewage. It’s going to the water fish and ambience feeling only five nanogram per liter, which is it’s nothing.

Ofir Menashe:

And they all started to transplant. So males into females, that’s when we are ending or heading all the next generation and Orman Sensex, there are done, almost are working on the part of the DNA so they can influence the expression of the DNA. So this is only one example. The other example is pharmaceuticals. For instance, if we take Berlin few years ago, there was a vessel billing for conference. They’re talking about Gabapentin it’s anticonvulsants and medicine, and they already have it inside the tap water. So the next generation of treatment will be micropolitan. There is two countries almost free. That’s already have regulation, and those are Switzerland and California. And I think Germany is getting insider. And now we need to know to figure how to treat it. And probably it will be in two sides. One side will be in at the end of domestic wastewater treatment plants and the other one in the origin of contamination, for instance, in pharmaceutical industry. And I think this is, this is the future of the treatment of water of water treatment in this industry. And we are of course, applying to this direction.

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Can Microbial Encapsulation help remove Micropollutants?

Antoine Walter:

Actually, it’s very interesting that you, you mentioned micro pollutants don’t get me started on the micro pollutants because if you do so we are there for two other hours, but when we were making some, I used to be part of our research programs. You mentioned Switzerland to be a forward looking country. And I was involved actually in, in the, in the first projects, they were in Switzerland to treat micro pollutants and we made some studies and we found out that, you know, the, the biological step in the waste water treatment plan is already eliminating 40 to 60% of the micro pollutants. But a good portion of those are not really eliminated. They are transferred into the sludge. And depending on what you do with this ledge, you might be putting those glutens back in the environment at some point. So I really see here a first advantage is that if you get rid of the sludge, because everything is put into inside the capsule, then probably you’re, you’re, you’re already solving one first part of the problem. And the second thing is that if we were treating only 60 persons through the microbial, I mean, they’re the biological step.

Antoine Walter:

It wasn’t really targeted at certain pathogens or certain micro pollutants. And now if you pour in your approach, which is to say, I can have that specific bacteria, which is looking at that specific problem that changes the paradigm. You mentioned that you’re involved in, in research project. Is there something you can already talk about here, or is it something that’s addressed in the future?

Ofir Menashe:

I can disclose something. We started to develop this process on a 2016, we were starting to target sex or murder. Orman’s sturdily Orman’s as a model for micro pollution. When we consulting with very senior engineers, they said we don’t have any chance because there is a competition. And I asked him, what do you mean about competition about between the bacteria and say, no, no, not between the bacteria, between the carbon sources. You are a very hard bio-degradable carbon source, which is the Germans. And on the other sides, you have a lots of easy to eat carbon sources. So obviously the bacteria will choose the soft. We call it soft bod or soft compounds to buy would degrade. I think it’s wrong. I think it’s wrong because now you, you are looking at bacteria as something that can choose. I feed that bacteria don’t have any capability to choose.

Ofir Menashe:

They evolve in India, evolutions, biochemical, process enzymes, and once are feeling once they are feeling the common sense that they are using. They started to break it down. If they’re not a carbon sources, of course they are using both, but still they will work on this major path. But this was very easy to prove in a tube. We put our bacteria in a tube with the sex Oman Stordahl Orman as the sole carbon source. And after a while, check the kinetic rate of the biodegradation. And then we took another tube, put it the Ormond and a glucose, which is considered very easy to biodegrade. Why do you think was the results not significant? It’s still breaking down significantly. There are many.

Antoine Walter:

So if you have the right bacteria either, right, and Zim, there’s no competition between various reactions.

Ofir Menashe:

You say something very important because if you have the right bacteria, what is the right bacteria? The right bacteria is the one that develop the capability to use this contaminant as a sole carbon sources as a sole carbon sources, which mean that it can take in the contaminates from estates up to mineralization, into CO2 and provide a carbon source and energy by that.

Antoine Walter:

So we’re back to your point about breeding the right bacteria. It’s fascinating. It’s really fascinating, but that’s all you don’t get me started because

Ofir Menashe:

It’s all about,

Antoine Walter:

That’s very interesting because you mentioned Switzerland, we start getting certain bacteria. You mentioned California, which is looking at 1.4 dioxane. And you have also now that the full P festival, which is another, another story. And then there is some specific lender in Germany, which is also in, in Sweden. I mean, it’s, it’s really popping up right and left. And of course the more we are going to go into reusing our wastewater, the more it’s going to be a hot topic to, to deal with this micro pollutants. But I take a mental note here. We have to make another deep dive on that. Another time Gabi off your, it was a pleasure to discuss your technology. I propose you to switch to the rapid fire questions.

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Rapid fire questions.

Antoine Walter:

My first question is what is the most exciting project you’ve been working on and why?

Ofir Menashe:

Well, I think everything is exciting because it’s new. We are really excited industry. Once we

Gabi Wolkinson:

Are developed a new process treatment, this is really exciting, especially when we see the succeed. Not all the, the study was very successful, but once you will see the success of a new treatment that no one done it before, this is really fulfilled. I can talk about the fish. Growing fish is amazing. It’s an amazing experience. And to be able to do it in a significantly different way than the world does it amazing. We put the nitrification process inside the fish pool. No one in the world does such a thing. It’s totally amazing.

Antoine Walter:

I have a totally different experience about growing fishes. It’s a different story, but I’m in a battle against the hero and in my, in my region, which are just eating all my fishes. But yeah, but yeah, sorry, I, I don’t want to sidetrack you here, whatever I did with you, a Gabi , what is your, your favorite part of your current job?

Gabi Wolkinson:

Oh, I love working with startup companies. That’s what I’ve been doing for the past 25 years is taking ideas and turning them into a successful companies. That’s what I did also in the I’ve been doing in my previous work and now with the field to take the an idea or a product that he invented into, turn it into something commercial that really has an impact and not just something that sells, but to have a good impact on the environment fills me up that does it for me.

Antoine Walter:

I didn’t ask him to do David. It should have, so let me, let me do it. Now. I was discussing with, with Gaetane Suzenet on that on that microphone a couple of weeks ago, and she was mentioning that the water industry is rich of startups and many startups, and it’s switch of majors. There are some majors, some even are emerging. What’s that? That’s another topic, but we are missing the scale-ups because sometimes the majors see interesting startups and they buy them out or simply startups want to have an impact locally, but they don’t go to that bigger scene. What is your ambition? I don’t think there there’s a wrong answer to that question, but what is your ambition? Where do you see bio castle in five years?

Gabi Wolkinson:

Castle in five years is probably going to have competition,

Antoine Walter:

Which is a good thing. That’s

Gabi Wolkinson:

Yeah, that says it all that says it all. It just shows that the process is right. And if the process is right in the industry for encapsulation, for macro encapsulation is a correct way to go and the world is going to acknowledge this kind of a technology, and it’s going to impact the environment positively. And if that happens, then that means that we’re going to go sky high.

Antoine Walter:

So the best thing I can wish was to have competition. Yeah. You know, usually it’s a, it’s not a good sign when you’re the only one at

Ofir Menashe:

The beginning. It’s not a good sign, but, you know, I, it always goes back to when we went to in marketing and we asked, why are all the shoe stores on the same street? That’s because people know where to go to buy shoes. So they all located in the cells on the same street. It’s okay. It’s okay. You mean, we’re not going to be alone here in any case. And the big companies are going to continue dominating the markets in any case. So the more this type of technology is acknowledged, then obviously companies are going to go appoint to start working in the same direction. And that means that we’re in a good place to be. Then we have to be smart enough to keep our head above the water and to grow ourselves faster than everyone else. And to be one step in front with new ideas, with new developments and with new processes.

Ofir Menashe:

And I think that that is what makes us a strong company is that we think out of the box, we’re bringing new processes to the market and that’s, what’s going to keep us going. That’s what’s going to keep us in front of everyone else. I’m more a dreamer. Now I’m a dreamer. I want in five years that bio castle would change the water industry world. Because if you you’re looking, this is an industry. That’s almost the only industry that expense only upgrading of infrastructure, only large scale, just enlarging scales and not reduce, reducing the infrastructure as we experienced in all others industries. So we, in this industry, we only experienced in enlargement and increasing in energy demand and bio castle. This small company want to opposite this direction to doing downscale things. We already done it. We extract much more for our infrastructure by 20%. And this is the direction to find a new ways to treat water, which costs less, which required less environmental resources and still will have good quality of water of product.

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Antoine Walter:

Well, actually, I beg you to believe me. I’m not trying to sidetrack you every second, but you mentioned, you’re looking for competition in five years and you want to have that big impact. I’m not sure competition is going to go one to one with you, but it looks like to me that several companies are looking at this activated sludge and thing. Hey, we can do that better. I’m thinking here of companies like, you know, narrate. I don’t know if you, if you know them,

Ofir Menashe:

That’s interesting because activated style slides, I think it’s from 1914 is more than 100 years old technology. So we need to upgrade. So now you’re, you’re in about granulated activated sludge and everything. And why is the Gabi  said that’s, it will be much more easy for us to have some competition because we don’t have something to compare with. We are so advanced that there is nothing to compare, and this is hard to explain.

Gabi Wolkinson:

Look, if you need to penetrate a market and you have to keep explaining the idea again and again, and again, it makes it hard to penetrate. It makes it hard to go into. And when I said that I wanted competition. It’s not that I’m want competition. I’m just saying that in five years from now, if there is competition, that means that we’re very successful. That’s the idea.

Ofir Menashe:

And adoption is very hard because we need to educate now the client itself, because we’re bringing something new, which is operated quite new, which reducing other things that they are used to, to use it, the form, a lot of fears, and you need to educate it, that this is this type of technology is actually working.

Antoine Walter:

Let me bring that back on track. I was the one to sidetrack. So I’m going to bring it on track. What is the trend to watch out in the water industry? And you’re not allowed to tell me encapsulating nature. What is the, all the trends to watch for?

Ofir Menashe:

Yeah. The trends are now are trying to use the bacteria in a dry, stayed in granulated, stayed in liquid with you know, by reactor next to the bio-reactor, which all the time, feeding the bioreactor all around, all around solution. This is why we, I told you that we are far away from those solutions. We are bringing something which is quite new and quite different for this industry. And it’s really to compare the fall into other things.

Gabi Wolkinson:

I want to take your question back to the beginning. When you asked, are we treating water or reading bacteria? I think that the trends are to try and breed bacteria better than people used to breed bacteria. I think that’s, that’s the, the major trend. How do you breed the bacteria in a better way so that you get better?

Antoine Walter:

How do you renovate the 19th,

Ofir Menashe:

Anton, you building all the engineering around the microbiology. So once you, you have the power to change the microbiology, all the engineering will change. And this is what we do is we are changing the core treatment here.

Antoine Walter:

I take it as a trend. I mean, that sounds like a fascinating field at least. Do you have sources to recommend, to keep up with water and waste wastewater markets and news?

Gabi Wolkinson:

We have a very good contact, actually global water data, right? Yeah.

Ofir Menashe:

We actually have a few academic academic publications, some of them in wa one of them in water research, for instance, which is very high in having very high impact factor.

Antoine Walter:

So w w we’re bringing in some experience academic, and also in project itself, you can find it in our website@biocastle.com. Actually, I have to subscribe to that one because I’ve read through your website and I found very interesting stuff. So it’s really, it’s a, if you’re into scientific papers, you really cool scientific papers on your, on your website. So I would definitely recommend that. And I are going to put the link in the, in piece of notes, of course. And which brings me to my last question after both of you, which have been awesome guests, would you have someone to recommend me to invite on that same microphone? We have a scene.

Antoine Walter:

I think we should get a scene from the global water data. He’s a fantastic guy. I think he’s in Indonesia and he just got promoted in his company and he’s on top of all the water data, but you know, if you want to have him on that microphone, tell him because I’m trying hard. And he keeps giving me all the contacts and awesome. And he really gives me really awesome guests, awesome suggestions, but he refuses to be himself on that microphone. So tell him, tell him yourself, come on. That microphone will Gabi  a few. It’s been a pleasure. I can only imagine what it could be to have even more lively discussions without the barrier of the, of the long-term distance. So I hope that we can have a follow-up discussion, the three of us around the same table. Thanks a lot for sharing all these inspiring insights into something I wasn’t aware of this, this way to bring nature to a new level, encapsulating nature. I mean, it’s a strong marketing take, but it’s also a very interesting take. So thanks a lot. And yeah. Talk to you in five years to see if you achieved. What’s your, you, you have in line and thank you. Thank you. It was lovely talking to you, and I hope that we don’t wait five years to talk to them.

Other Episodes:

FREDsense: Revolutionizing Water Quality Monitoring with Biosensor Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 7 May 2025

Swirltex: Revolutionizing Wastewater Treatment with Bubbly Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 30 April 2025

Blue Foot Membranes: The Next Evolution in Water Filtration

By Antoine Walter | 16 April 2025

Echo River Capital: Pioneering the Future of Water Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 3 April 2025

1001 Fontaines: Engineering Sustainable Water Access Through Social Entrepreneurship

By Antoine Walter | 22 March 2025

Amazon’s Water Footprint: Tech Giant’s Quest for Water Sustainability

By Antoine Walter | 19 March 2025

Turing: The AI Revolution Quenching the Water Industry’s Thirst for Innovation

By Antoine Walter | 26 February 2025

Altillion: Pioneering Digital Intelligence for Water Asset Management

By Antoine Walter | 6 February 2025

Flocean: Pioneering Ocean-Based Water Solutions

By Antoine Walter | 15 January 2025

Botanical Water Technologies: Harvesting Liquid Gold from Plants

By Antoine Walter | 4 December 2024

The post Do you Really Provide Job Security to your Best Workers? appeared first on (don't) Waste Water.

Jacobs was the World’s n°1 Design Firm for the third year in a row as per ENR’s ranking in 2020

What we covered:

How Engineering is at the same time a fundamental pillar and an often-overlooked field of the Water Industry.

How Equipment, Procurement, and Construction companies play different roles from one geography to another

How EPCs, OEMs, Consultants and Industry Players collaborate, intersect or compete

How Consultant Engineers deal with long-term project planning and customer relationships

How their catalyst role brings many skills and professions together to warranty a successful outcome

How engineering is another way to play Lego

How dealing with a client’s vision sometimes goes far beyond technical aspects

How engineers cannot be agnostic and have their favorite treatments (but also know when to be pragmatic!)

What’s the right level of granularity to manage a project, and shall you really care about this valve?

How to deal with innovation and how this goes again far beyond the technical side of things

How having nature working for you might be challenging but so rewarding

How knowledge vanishes with the Silver Wave (and what to do about it)

How communication and politics influence the fate of water projects

… and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨  

Teaser:

Resources:

Send your warm regards to Maika on LinkedIn

Visit Jacob’s Website

is on Linkedin

Antoine Walter on LinkedIn

Full Transcript:

These are computer generated, so expect some typos

Antoine Walter:

So, hi Maika, welcome to the show.

Maika Pellegrino:

Hi, thanks for having me.

Antoine Walter:

So first I hope I pronounced that one, right? Usually that’s part of my housekeeping, but I didn’t do it that time. Micah is that the right way to pronounce your name? Okay. Is the right way. Good. You’re based in Toronto right now. So what can you tell us about Toronto that people would dream to go there once they can?

Maika Pellegrino:

We have beaches. Oh, really very good beaches. So even if it’s a Lake beach is very good, like you really can enjoy summers in Toronto.

Antoine Walter:

So you see, when I was thinking of Toronto, I would never thought of a beach. So that’s really a good one. So thanks for sharing that one. Actually watch me have a terrific accent from a first question. When I was checking your path on LinkedIn, I saw that you studied and I have to read my notes for that engineered year MBN Tel, which I would roughly translate as environmental engineering. Is that right?

Maika Pellegrino:

Yeah. So I actually started like in Brazil, I started as engineering. You don’t start on a specific engineering. I started as engineering and then I moved to chemical engineering and at the end of chemical engineering, you can choose more like fields you want to follow. So I followed environmental at that point, I was focused between thinking about food industry and environmental, but I guess like my heart was stronger than my stomach. At that point, I ended up in environmental and I always like it like outdoors outside animals and everything. So

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Antoine Walter:

That was the environmental element. But how did you move to water inside this environmental bigger topic?

Maika Pellegrino:

Yeah, but I was working in an environmental. I was already working with water somehow. I was working at first with groundwater remediation, which is basically treatment of groundwater to kind of be injected back in the soil. And then I was working with water resources, but it was basically working with the water and wastewater plants and where tunes tow. And what’s the level of treatment required to not affect the water resources. So it wasn’t readily working with the water is water treatment in, in a certain way, but just as environmental engineering that was not paying the bills. So I kind of need to go for something that like, anyway, I was like a recent graduated engineer, so environmental was not paying the bills. It was like super overlooked in Brazil. So at that point I had the opportunity to join Degrémont which is SUEZ nowadays on the water and wastewater interests, pure water and wastewater treatment, but it wasn’t so connected somehow. Like there was like a lot of knowledge that I got gain on my first years that I could apply at Suez at the time. And he just kept going.

Antoine Walter:

And so your carrier inside Suez brought you to Canada where you stayed.

Maika Pellegrino:

So yeah, so actually we pushed like me and my husband and we want to, to move out of Brazil just to experiencing something different. And he was good. That was, allow me that opportunity to continue in the same company and doing the same thing. At the time we moved to Montreal, we thought he would just spend a few years and go back to Brazil. But 13, 14 years after here, I still am. I, and I don’t think we are coming back soon, but anyway, kind of, kind of that grow in my heart.

Antoine Walter:

Interesting here to me is you mentioned that at the time you were working for demo, which is an EPC company, basically, if you want to make it simple and now you’re working for Jacobs, what’s your role at Jacobs and how did you switch from EPC to really engineering? Yeah.

Maika Pellegrino:

So when I started at Ramon in Brazil, it was it is an EPC company. So I was involved on the entire treatment process, I would say, like from raw water to distribution and either as application engineer choosing like every single step and designing every single step or as execution engineer as well, like kind of participating on the procurement in going to site overseeing the construction, commissioning the plant. Like my first two weeks at Suez was commissioning and wastewater treatment plants. So in Brazil I was on the EPC chain. So I was seeing like the whole, the way business was done is different. When I moved to Montreal to Suez in Montreal here, the municipality, the way business are done is different. Like the PC does not have much room here. Like they don’t have much space here. So we were basically just delivering one equipment in a treatment chain design by a consultant engineering company.

So after a few years, my first few years here, it was actually good because it allowed me to see different process in, it was a small projects, different process in a number of process or like the number like as EPC in Brazil, I got participated maybe to 10 projects in Montreal. I got participated in 30, 40 projects or because they were small, like then you get more number of projects, but I was missing to be part of this food chain and the decision on the pure design before the decision maker, like when you do the decision-making. So I moved at that time to another consultant company in Montreal, because I want to go back to the designing and not just focusing in one process, but like focusing in the entire plant. Now, as in Jacobs, I’m a senior project manager, design is still my love like this. You what I like to do, but I think in the water industry, you cannot just be a pure project manager. You need a very broad technical background, and I still have the chance to actually do some technical or even coach people in doing the technical. So it’s not just pure project management. It’s a technical project management at the end that allows you to be part of the design and you sign off and every single deliverable be a client. So you kind of need that technical knowledge and you participate on the technical side.

Antoine Walter:

Actually, you raise a very good point with this elements that the EPC job is not really the same in Brazil than what it might be in Canada. And it’s certainly not the same than what it, what it is in Switzerland or in Denmark or wherever in the world. And I like to sketch the water industry as a pyramid. You have the end user on the top of that pyramid, he’s owning the plans. Then you have the consultant engineer. So the place where you are today, which is basically the one telling the end user, how it can solve his problem, then the EPC has a bit of the process knowledge, but it’s rather there to put all the equipment together. Then you have the OEMs beneath the EPC. That, will be doing this single parts. And then at the very bottom, you have the suppliers to the place where I am. For instance, today, I’m sometimes wondering, you know, OEMs wants also to go a bit into the EPC world, the PC wants to do everything and say they can be a one-stop shopping for the end-user and consultants, if you go to the website of Jacobs, for instance, it seems like Jacobs can also do everything. So it sounds to me like the borders between all these words are kind of fading. Is it something which is fully wrong or what’s your opinion? There

Maika Pellegrino:

You are not wrong. And I really depends on where you are in the world and like what’s happening. But even if you takes Suez, for example, they can be apes that can play a role as OEM. They can pay a role as end users because they do operate some plants. So yeah, there is no distinctive line in, I think that’s part of the beauty of the industry.

Antoine Walter:

So to focus back on, on what you do today, you’re working in a consultant engineering company. Where would you say that your job starts on a project? When do you get first involved and who is your interlocutor?

Maika Pellegrino:

So where am I where my job starts in the project? Yeah, it’s a cycle as well. Right? So where if you take a specific project where my job starters is actually delivering a good project to a client that we recognize your like competence, and then he wants you to be in a nother project coming. So you would be like in kind of like making your client happy at current project. And then for the upcoming project, we would be involved in if the client needs to help out them to tailor their request for proposal, if he has questions or anything like this. And then once that request for proposal is out, I would participate on the proposal itself. And then if you win and then you start executing the project, but you kind of have to do a good execution, otherwise you don’t get the next chance. So that’s why it’s like a cycle. So I’m glad to be part of the entire cycle, like from execution to proposal. And when we were talking about the execution, you have the, sometimes you have the planning stage and then you have the design stage or in the construction stage. So I’m also, I also participate in all of these stages for different projects in different time. So it really does give you like the entire cycle.

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Antoine Walter:

The reason why I’m asking you that is because I was cooking a provocative question. Don’t take me wrong here. I don’t want to put you in a bad position, but you might be seeing behind me. I have this water treatment handbook from Degrémont And let’s say, I’m an end user. I take that book. Okay. It’s a 1,500 pages I have to digest that it’s not very easy, but there’s also a summary. So I could go directly to my problem and see the issues. Why do I need a consultant engineer to help me out? I mean, come on, it’s water. It’s easy to treat. Isn’t it

Maika Pellegrino:

It’s it is if you know what’s happening first, but in every single project or every single concern or issue or challenge is very specific, right? Like it’s not about just taking the book and reading. It depends on you are the end user. You have some sort of knowledge, but first, do you have the workload to do it second? Do you have all the disciplines inside that municipality to complete the entire project? And other things you have to keep in mind is do you know, have all the knowledge about the regulation, about the environmental that’s going on? Like every single water quality is different. Like for example, when I was in Brazil, our biggest issue was not biggest, but one of the turbidity was around around 700 NTU in Canada. Turbidity is 0.5 NTU. So there is so much variation and quantity, water quality, but the challenge of the environment, even how much money you have for the project who is your end user, not the operator, but like the community, what the community wants, what the community is able to pay for. So you kind of have to get all of this in the table and, and make it the best you can for that, like find the best solution for that project. It’s the amendment. We will help you, but it’s just a tool.

Antoine Walter:

I said it, I mean, it’s a provocative questions sorry but, but I fully, fully subscribed to your point, actually, if I get you right, the thing that’s different than every project is the water. There’s no two water, which are exactly the same. So what is actually the, the first question you have to raise when you’re on the new project, is it to draw a water sample or what is it?

Maika Pellegrino:

It really depends on like, the product can be very broad as well. I have worked at, in projects as like beating in projects as EPC in Brazil, that you don’t even have a water quality. So the first thing you go, it’s get a boat, catch the middle of the river and sample and do like bench tests and pilot tasks. But I think the, actually the first question I would ask myself is when you get a call from my client is like, how can I make this work? What’s the approach I can take on this project that can lead us to the project objectives, that they can make this a successful project. So it’s more like how you’re going to approach this. And then you use your knowledge to develop tasks as part of this approach, but like how you’re going to approach what it makes sense to approach. That’s the first question I asked myself,

Antoine Walter:

You mentioned the various elements, which can be far beyond technical aspects. Like how much the community is ready to pay for treatments. What are the regulations and all that stuff. That’s really important inside the decision metrics. I guess, how many different customer do you manage? It’s not a nice word, but let’s say manage at the same time is it’s like a handful, 20, 1,000, 1?

Maika Pellegrino:

It’s a handful, at least. So you start by the community like for the residents who was actually going to be consuming that water. And then if you hearing on tire, for example, a lot of the municipalities are two years. So do you have the regional who is responsible for the supply, but you have the local municipality who is responsible for distribution. So that already like adds you some stakeholders. Then you have the ministries that are different stakeholders inside the regional municipality or the local municipality. You have the operations, the capital team. So like one house, the money, the other one is actually going to have to deal with this after. And then you have, you are always dealing with the vendors and the contractors. Yeah. It’s the number of different people and different interests that you have to deal in. Every single project are more than 10 for sure. And that’s where I always say, that’s not just like pure engineering, like just not the technical side. If you don’t have like a soft skills to understand all of this and communicate with all of these levels, you cannot get a successful project done.

Antoine Walter:

So what’s the most important, soft skill you need to deal with a project

Maika Pellegrino:

It’s communication, it’s communication. You got to communicate well, communication is the most important thing. And not just send any mail like nowadays, it’s not just a mail. You still kind of have to pick up the phone is you have to act like active, listen, what they are saying and what they are not saying.

Antoine Walter:

You mentioned that you have to deal with the vendors and the contractors, and you know, I’m not cracking a secret for the people that were listening to previous episodes of that podcast. I used to work as well for Degremont and SUEZ in the past. And I remember sometimes when I was visiting for the first time, like a large industrial who had to treat his water, he was envisioning big shops that I would have in my head office. And on those big shelves, I would have a fully blown treatment for his water. And I would just have to pick like treatment and process number seven, number three, and number five, buy back them in a continuous sending to him and he can deal with that. And we both know that’s not true. There’s there’s engineering involved, but on the other end, there’s also a certain part of truth here. I think every single vendor or contractor tries to have his standards and in between there’s this fine line of how much engineering is involved on each project. How would you define that engineering is it’s fine tuning a standard, or is it more trying to build upon very single step and make it a nice plant? I mean, where would you put the cursor between those two extremes

Maika Pellegrino:

Engineering is getting all these packages that are on your shelf and it’s like a Lego at the end. Like you have the Legos, but you can Butte, anything you want with that. Like any single person who build a Lego is going to look at different at the end, the engineering part of it it’s to get the Lego pieces and build what your client wants, what the community needs. That’s where the engineering or the consultant engineering enters like in are able to do it, able to help the client to get to the final project.

Antoine Walter:

Let’s dig a bit into this one. You mentioned build what the client wants, but let’s say the client is a fan of membranes and a, you think the right treatment is something which does involve membranes. Do you try to fit in your process? What the client loves and ones, or do you convince him that he’s wrong?

Maika Pellegrino:

I think you have to know when it, let it go. Like you have to show the technical aspects, the advantages of one technology and the other technology. But at one point, if he is only comfortable in operating in maintaining main brains at the end, you cannot push for something that he’s not comfortable with because he’s the one who’s going to be dealing with this in the next 20, 25 years. So he has to buy in, like, he doesn’t matter what you are offering, they have to buy in and they have to take ownership of this later. So it has to be an open conversation. You can show the consultant can show the benefits of every single one and sometimes maybe what they want and they don’t have the budget to pay for it. Like, so it’s always like in every single aspect, there is a compromise, I think, in both sides. And that’s what it’s, it always comes back to me. And when I say client, I’m not necessarily just talking about the municipality, the final client is the residence, right? Like, so the whole idea is to give them she improved their water quality and to make sure they have a reliable water coming through there.

Antoine Walter:

So does that mean that you try to build one process or do you pre-build in parallel, maybe two, three options. And then by discussing with them, you refine and you choose one out of the three,

Maika Pellegrino:

A lot of ways that can be done. So usually you start a process when you don’t have anything defined, you would start for like a feasibility study that you would consider different process and look at the cost benefit of every single one of them in way with your client, what would be the best option? There are some, for example, in Ontario, there are some regulation that allow on your planning when you are planning for a new project or you’re planning to add a treatment, or if you’re planning for expanding a plan, or they do require you to follow a planning process, which is called [inaudible] class environmental assessment, that you have to take all of these in consideration and not just what again is not what the client necessarily what the client wants, but what would be the best for the environment and environment accounts, social, economical, natural vegetation, animals, the community itself. Like if the construction would disrupt the community for a long time, maybe it’s not the way to go. So all of these aspects is taking in consideration in every single project. So when we say what client needs, it’s a little, it’s not like what a single person needs. It’s what, it’s more broad.

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Antoine Walter:

And yet, in the water industry. That’s the beauty of the, of the water treatment as well, is that you can have several ways to treat the water. There’s not one that works in all the other that don’t, there are advantages and drawbacks for each of them. So, you know, if I’m walking for instance, in Switzerland and I visit some plants, I bet you, I can recognize who was the consultant on each of the plants, because you can notice that there is kind of a favorite way to do things which is slightly different from one company to another, which leads me to that question. Do you personally have a favorite treatment? Do you think Jacobs has a favorite treatment or are you fully agnostic?

Maika Pellegrino:

I think in general, people are not agnostic and I cannot say Jacobs has a favorite. I think it depends on which engineering at Jacobs you were talking with. I of course have my favorite ones. Like I’m a little bit averse of chemicals. And I say like, if you can treat without why you would add chemicals, right? Like if you have solutions that last, like why you would add chemicals to a water that is already good, especially in Canada, like in Brazil, you couldn’t like you need them, but in Canada it’s the water is, they are so lucky. The water is already good. So why would you add more stuff to it? But doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m gonna be able to work on in this type of project here. So,

Antoine Walter:

So you try to avoid chemicals as soon as possible. I get, that makes sense to me. Well, let’s say, try to make up a fictive example. Let’s say I’m a vendor of a full word, ultra filtration. I mean really try to making something up which doesn’t exist, which is difficult, but no, let’s take a real example. Let’s say I’m a supplier of ultrafiltration skids and I happen to have a good relationship with you just because in the early stage of a project, you know, that I would support you. I would make calculations for you. I would not ask you what’s the project who’s the client. I would just help you. Would that influence you? Or would you just keep saying, you know, you’re just another supplier. I don’t try to trick you. Sorry, but I’m just curious

Maika Pellegrino:

No, I know it’s, I think the relationship is important, but I don’t think the decision would be made just because of it. Like you see, you have a professional responsibility to offer or discuss with her or presented to your clients the best options.

Antoine Walter:

And what’s the level of granularity up to which he would go. You know, I mentioned that pyramid and you are quite at the top of the food chain, if I might say so, if now we’re a supplier of valves or pumps come to you and say, Hey, I think I can help you because you know what, if you replace that valve by that valve, it’s going to be much better. Is it something you would really consider or you, you have all these other stages of the pyramid in between so that you don’t have to deal with every single little detail of the plans.

Maika Pellegrino:

I already had to deal with every single detail of the plant, like up to the what’s the material of this nut you’re going to put, but nowadays I’m less involved literally, but I think it’s important. I think if it’s supplier or the orient has something interesting that can make that project better, why not listen to them? But then you just have to be cognizant that you have to weigh this options and weigh the options and see if it’s really would improve the project.

Antoine Walter:

You’re opening a very interesting door here. If I come to you and present you a brand new process, and I have many lab studies that shows it’s wonderful, it’s nice. It’s a 30% better than whatever it exists, but I don’t have a full-scale reference. What would be your position? What do you think is the right position as a consultant? Where do you put again, the cursor between the risk? Because of course I never built it full scale, so I might be just making up my numbers, but on the same hint, it looks interesting. It looks promising. So how do you deal with that

Maika Pellegrino:

First? I would tell you to go see the, when he spoke clients as well, not just the consultant because they have to buy, like we were discussing, they have to buy in, in a new technology. They are the one financing it and they are going to, to be there with this. So they have to have the courage to bat in a new technology, new, innovative technology. And if the vendor, if the supplier or the vendor could, he has to work, like all the ans not just the consultant, because the consultant alone, he will never have enough for like her, the voice, not going to be strong enough to get this going by itself. But it’s a long way. Like from what I have seen most in Canada, the clients are very conservative and they are not open to pilots, gave results in a full scale project. And not even that, they are not even open to test fully scale results from a different region or country in a food scale plant in their province or their countries. So even like the making something that it’s very like establish in Europe and bring it to North America, or if it’s established in States and bring a chicken under, or that it’s not, things are done completely different. And they want to know if their neighbor has done it. And if it has the word,

Antoine Walter:

Where would you set the limit? If I come with a process from the UK and I go to Canada, it might be difficult to get accepted. If I come with something from the US and I come to Canada, is it any better or does it really have to be from Ontario? So that Ontario accepts it?

Maika Pellegrino:

For sure, like you asked you, Canada is already easier, any new entering, like regulatory of every single province, for example, Quebec has their own approval of technologists. So it’s not about offering is about getting them ministry of environment. You get that technology approved. So if it’s not approved by the ministry, you cannot install, right? Like first I think there is more, but there’s more harmony. Like when we comes to like North America, then like rest of the world. But I also, because there is like organizations as Aww, WWE WEF and like the knowledge, the sharing knowledge, and then producing knowledge in between Canada and us are large. Like we work with the same organizations

Antoine Walter:

To your personal experience. What is the most risk-taking or innovative process that you had to deal with? And how did you get that? Working through all the steps of conservatism that the water market might have

Maika Pellegrino:

The most innovative one, I guess I haven’t seen this project to the end, but I think the most innovative one was the ozone system for Montreal wastewater treatment plant, which is huge. It’s just you in execution. And I was the application engineer at four different months at the time. And we were trying to use the existing shaft outfall shaft to mix the ozone with the wastewater. So we were talking about one meter and a half ejector inside a 20 meter diameter shaft. So like how to build this, how to make it work. So that was really thinking outside of the box, but something that it’s not innovative, but I think it’s actually old tech knowledge that I think it’s overlooked by. Most of the clients is actually any biological treatment. Like whether it’s for ground water or surface water, if you add a biological treatments filtration in your treatment line that can give you more stable water in the distribution system. But since you have lost control of what’s going on, I think usually I, we get a lot of pushback from the municipalities just because it’s unknown, right? Like, you know, it works, but you don’t have control over it. So

Antoine Walter:

It’s difficult to trust nature. And to say those little biological things that are going to eat out the pollutants,

Maika Pellegrino:

And that’s the, actually the beauty thing, the beauty of it, like you are using bacterias to do the job for you. It’s way more like energy is way less chemical consumption is way less. Your end water quality is way more stable and why not, but just because it’s less, I feel that because it’s less understood, it’s less controllable. It’s usually not considered easily

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Antoine Walter:

3D, less controllable because you, you could say that today with the new ways to measure everything activity, BOD COD, so many parameters, it might be easier to control than it was maybe 30 years ago.

Maika Pellegrino:

It is easier to control than three years ago. And it’s, they even an how to, like right now you can have like ATP counts on the plant. Like before you, you don’t even have an like a range of ATP that would be considered like something you didn’t know what would be the ATP. Just say, if it’s a process is working or not, and now you have like guidelines on those and you can do the ATP count on your own lab. So it is better to control. Men are things less controllable because it can be more unpredictable. Like something can get upset and then you have, you need to recover and it’s doable. But from my experience, it doesn’t get that upset. Like it’s kind of rare, but people, they have that fear that like, what if it gets upset, but we’re going to do, like,

Antoine Walter:

Would you think that might be linked with some, let’s not use the big names, but lost knowledge? You know, in that, in the very first episode of that podcast, I was interviewing Laurent De Franceschi and he was referring to one of the guys that taught him a wastewater treatment. And the guy was watching the sledge Bessons and would tell you, the sludge index is at 17, and then you could do a chemical analysis. And that would be true when nowadays, maybe those guys really passionate about that job are retired for two decades now. And maybe there’s a bit less sexiness and attractiveness with this industry, which means that not all profiles are attracted to operating a dirty and smelling wastewater treatment plant. Do you think that plays a role or is it really,

Maika Pellegrino:

I do think it plays a role. I do think it’s plays a role. Like if you, when you get operated a biological treatment and understanding, and like you does have a feeling that it’s gonna happen. And, but anyway, the world is changing somehow. So like people don’t give that time to understand the deep of the thing or to spend time. Like everything is so fast nowadays that like even myself and sometimes I fear for the young engineers that everything it’s for tomorrow. So you don’t have even time to assimulate that knowledge that you acquire today.

Antoine Walter:

You know, when I was in engineering school, I was told that as an engineer, you have to be able to take, you know, a small piece of paper and do your calculation in front of your customer. And that has to be roughly accurate, but I was told that, but I never used it in fact, because everything nowadays can be automated made by a smartphone made by a computer. Do you think it’s still important to know this, these roots of engineering? Or is it just like saying you want faster horses when in fact you want a car?

Maika Pellegrino:

I think it’s just too important because it gives you the sensibility of the numbers. Like if you cannot do by hand, or if you cannot, if you don’t understand the units or if you cannot do by hand, or if you cannot do yourself or like, kind of have the principle in your mind, you don’t have sensibility of the numbers. And then how you know that if that whatever the software or tool or Excel gives you makes sense or not, when you do it by hand, it gives you some sort of like scale. Like, does it make sense

Antoine Walter:

Some month ago? I had Transcend on that same microphone and Transcend has a strong take at our industry. They offer a software which claims to automate the first 30% of the engineering. So of course, when it comes to advanced engineering, there’s still a human who has to understand and get all those, those things sorted. But their belief is that the first 30% of rough engineering first steps can be automated. And actually they don’t even believe it. They also do it first. What’s your feeling on that? Do you think that the early stages can be automated and if yes, up to which points can we automate things?

Maika Pellegrino:

I think anything can be automated and if it can be automated is because it’s pure logical. I think the part that it’s, this you’re there before you automated, or even to read the results after of the automation and that’s engineering, like how like to be automated, you need to fit with data. And that data that you got from your field trip that you got from talking with the client that you got out of for like water quality analysis, anything like how you feed and what of the range are going to use that cannot be automated in how you make that project is specific for that location. And for that particular artist that cannot be automated. And after if it’s, it’s just helping you building a model or making like hundreds of interactions to optimize that, yes, let’s use this too. But if you don’t give good input and if you don’t understand the output, then not automation is worthless.

Antoine Walter:

So shit in, shit out. That’s the same. And of course, if you don’t understand you, you cannot see if it’s and you just have to trust what’s your, your program is giving you, you mentioned earlier a white elephant in this industry with the Montreal project, which lasted, I would say over a decade or roughly a decade. Is it an exception or do you have also in your daily portfolio of projects, you’re dealing with some of them which are really lasting for years?

Maika Pellegrino:

No. Yes. There are some projects that has been executed within the schedule. I have been through a lot of projects like that, like that they are not always complicated or like super political. Yeah. There is, there is projects going on. Like, of course you can never know, like when sometimes you break ground, you never know what’s gonna find and something can delay construction or whatever it is, or regulation. I have been to projects that regulation changes in the middle. So you have to restart things can happen. But I think we are getting better and better and better in actually executing them within the forecasted schedule, but

Antoine Walter:

Would be the average schedule of a project. Let’s say wastewater project, for instance,

Maika Pellegrino:

A wastewater project. So I would say like 20 years and why I’m saying this, because if you just, everything is starts at the master plan level, like how discriminatory is going to grow. When I’m going to need this wastewater plant, how much water they will be consuming. And then if you don’t identify it from 10 years for now that you need expansion, and then you don’t start putting the budget to actually construct that 10 years for now, you’re not going to have a project. So two years of construction, it’s nothing. When you look at the 20 years, like the municipality, the clients, they do start looking at this 20, 25 years before they actually need to invest on that. And actually, if they don’t, then that’s when they started doing projects that is just putting silver tape here and there. And it’s not the best outcome. Like you kind of need, you need a good planning phase. And then to think how you are going to actually do the procurement, it’s going to be a conventional procurement. You’re going to go through like an EPC or like PPP. And like all of these, they start way before then the actual project. So the timeline of a project it’s very large.

Antoine Walter:

That means that as a consultant engineer, you re are in a, in a long-term relationship with the municipality,

Maika Pellegrino:

You are in a very long term relationship.

Antoine Walter:

That’s when things go right. But does that happen also to see some divorce?

Maika Pellegrino:

There is a lot of divorces. I have seen divorces. I have seen marriages in, if you want to keep Marin, it’s like any sort of time and you have to do your best. You have to listen to your client. You have to, should be reasonable when know how to communicate with them.

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Antoine Walter:

How do you deal with the children if you divorce? Because basically all the plans, you are an external brain. It’s hard to continue to work. If you don’t have a brain.

Maika Pellegrino:

Yeah. You find a way there’s always a way you bring different brings new. There’s always a way.

Antoine Walter:

Okay. That’s I had never thought of that, but you know, these 20 years timeline that you mentioned, it’s a huge commitment between a municipality and their consultant. And then it builds on a lot of thrust and

Maika Pellegrino:

The municipality not necessarily needs to carry the same consultant in over this all these years. And sometimes there are some consultants that just do the planning phase. There are some concern consultants that are more focused on, on the detailed design construction, but if every single one of them do a good job, then it’s easier to pass the stick between one to the other. I have seen like, if things are not documented well from the previous consultant, sometimes you kind of have to start from scratch or like kind of rework somehow, because you kind of have to make sure that if it’s not documented, you cannot know if it’s the good, the best way to do it. And since you have a responsibility to know how it’s going forward, you have to double check. So that happens.

Antoine Walter:

I have to be cautious of your time as well. So sorry. I’m always the one who asks too many questions, but I still have to in this deep dive that would like to raise to you the first is what is the thing you’ve learned the hard way in your job as consultant engineer?

Maika Pellegrino:

I would say it’s that the political behind the project, like there are things usually water and wastewater upgrades in municipal treatment plants don’t bring volts, right? Like the residents don’t know what’s happening. The community does know what’s happening. So the budget is very limited. So I think the challenge is like how you justify that budget and like how you make the high management and the municipality understanding that that is required and how you get their attention that it deserves. And at the same time be cognizant that like, whatever project you were working on it’s taxpayers’ money, right? Like, so you have like a professional commitment to do your best and like use your best judgment. So I think that, I think that would be the hardest thing in as a consultant engineer.

Antoine Walter:

Very interesting one. I have a last question, which is actually not a question because I promised myself to stop asking that question. So I’m not asking the question, I leave it up to you, but we have a 85, 15 gender quotes in the water industry between men and women. And I’m just wondering as I said, I’m not asking the question because I find it quite unfair for every woman to have on that microphone to have to have a strong opinion on that. So I don’t want to push it more than it should, but do you have a strong opinion that you you’d like to share here? Or should we just say that we are to what our professionals and our gender has nothing to do with the discussion?

Maika Pellegrino:

I would like to say that gender has nothing to do with discussion, but I see you see a lot of business being done because people are more comfortable doing business between the same gender. They find a way to have an easier conversation I use or talkies or communication. So we see you, I see you that don’t think a woman has equal opportunities, but as a woman, I think that the gender discussion has to keep going in general, not just on the water industry, like we still don’t have the same opportunities. And for the water industry, I wouldn’t expect a 50% ratio just because I think sometimes don’t interest women as much as men like the construction part of it or the, but the important is just to have equal opportunities.

Antoine Walter:

And do you think you have those equal opportunities today in Canada for instance, which I would imagine as a forward looking country,

Maika Pellegrino:

I would say Canada is, I, I think it’s different from Brazil, but not necessarily say it better. For example, from my experience in both countries, I have worked some in us as well. They all have at one part of the chain, one of them have different concepts or like different inequalities. Some, I think here as in the office, you probably have the equal opportunities, but maybe not on the field or like, I don’t know how actually, but like I was, when I was on the field in Brazil, I was actually find that I had the same opportunity, but not necessarily in the office. So I think it depends on where you are and where the country you are. There’s this you room for improvements, for sure. Again, I don’t expect 50% ratio just because women have like different preferences in life, but just that don’t make that a no.

Antoine Walter:

Okay. Here, if it’s good with you, I propose you to switch to the rapid fire questions. Sure.

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Rapid fire questions.

Antoine Walter:

So in that last section, I try to keep my questions short and you can of course belong in the answer, but the aim is to be as short as possible. My first question would be what is the most exciting project you’ve been working on and why?

Maika Pellegrino:

The most exciting project I’m working on right now, it’s called crown water treatment strategy for the region of Yorkin, Ontario, where you’re working is investing to improve the water quality for their residents. That it’s most groundwater quality, run water, water with lots of iron manganese. And we are finally moving to treatment removal of this iron manganese, which you would improve the water quality for the residents, like in a way that it’s impressive. Not, not like it’s what they deserve at the end. Like nobody deserves to open at half and half like orange water.

Antoine Walter:

That’s a good one for sure. What’s your favorite part of your current job?

Maika Pellegrino:

My favorite part is brainstorm concept designs.

Antoine Walter:

How much of your job, what percentage would it be that you do without brainstormings

Maika Pellegrino:

The design team like? So I know for this groundwater Truman strategy, we are brainstorming concept designs with the civil engineer, with the structural engineering, with the CAD person. Like we just sit down and see, how can we lay this out? How can we make it work? What’s the best way? What are the options where we can put the new treatment? What’s the best way to connect with the existing that’s on site. And so all this brainstorming and discussion with the other engineers and technicians on the project, just, I think it feeds my mind. Like

Antoine Walter:

I can see how that can be a mind falling. What is the trend to watch out in the water industry?

Maika Pellegrino:

I think it’s something I want to be watch out, but it’s like climate change because it will hit us is already hitting us, but I don’t think it’s poking enough yet. So that’s what I would like to be the trend.

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Antoine Walter:

What can we do better in the water industry regarding climate change? There’s two ways looking at

Maika Pellegrino:

One thing is having a design more sustainable to contribute with that, like in the long term, but also considering that the storms are going to hit us more often, like that anything can happen. So you cut when you’re doing the design, you do have to take more in mitigation aspects and not just, ah, like it was here for 20 years, never happened anything. Now it’s going to start happen. Like so you have to consider mitigation in every single project. And I would really would like to see more sustainable designs coming up for the long term, but I don’t think there’s a financial issue with this. And like how usually usually this is more sustainable designs lose on your cost benefit. Then I just questioned myself is the aspects or the criteria he was on the cost benefits that has to be revised to take that in consideration.

Antoine Walter:

Usually we are in a strongly regulation driven industry. So if regulation is not helping, it’s difficult to come up with the good pupil that wants to do better than the others.

Maika Pellegrino:

Yeah. And, and it’s not the consultant or the local municipality that’s going to do this. It kind of has to be pushed from the government. So regulation in anyway, I hope that’s what we have to watch out for in the industry.

Antoine Walter:

Do you have sources to recommend, to keep up with the latest trends?

Maika Pellegrino:

I do like to like besides the North American sources, is it like AWA WEF, ADA Wharf. I am always reading online magazine. That’s called water wastewater treatment online from UK because I think Europe in general, they are way more advanced on more sustainable construction or more like resilient construction or even like more like emerging contaminants. So I do like to read a lot of European magazines or like references.

Antoine Walter:

Would you have someone to recommend me to invite on that same microphone?

Maika Pellegrino:

Yes. I would recommend to someone that it’s completely different, maybe from whoever you have ever interviewed, I will recommend it. Eleonora Allen, which is the CEO of water for people. She’s actually a previous Jacobs alumini, but today she’s dedicated to water for people. And I think he would be a really interesting interview. And then she could bring an idea of the water industry in this countries in development and how it’s water and sanitation for them.

Antoine Walter:

That sounds really interesting. So I’m going to make sure to reach out to her as soon as possible. If people want to follow up with you, where can they find you online, offline, if you want them to find you?

Maika Pellegrino:

Yeah, I would say LinkedIn, I’m not a very good social media person. Like I do not post, like I barely have the normal social media and I don’t look so often, but the best way to reach me would be through LinkedIn.

Antoine Walter:

Well, Maika, it was a pleasure to share this Howard with you. I’ve learned many things on your you’re a consultant engineering word and a bit beyond, so thanks for sharing.

Maika Pellegrino:

Thanks for inviting me.

Antoine Walter:

I hope to have the opportunity to talk about your long-term relationships with those municipalities in in a future.

Maika Pellegrino:

Let’s see where you are. I’m headed on the marriage or divorce,

Antoine Walter:

Hopefully on the good side, but

Maika Pellegrino:

You never know.

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The post How to Consistently Deliver on the Promise as a Consultant Engineer? appeared first on (don't) Waste Water.

Membrane Consultancy Associates is a consultancy practice bringing expertise and guidance in membrane technology.

What we covered:

How membrane treatments evolved from a joke to a must-have

How a couple of lonely prophets actually defeated all ods to impose membranes in wastewater treatment

The perks of Membrane Bioreactors

Why MBRs swiftly took off in industrial applications and countries like China

The Anatomy of a Membrane Bioreactor

Polymeric vs. Ceramic Membranes

Flat sheet vs. Hollow Fiber Membranes

When it comes to Wastewater Treatment, size matters!

Some limits of MBRs

Why wastewater reuse will become mandatory

… and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨  

Resources:

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Full Transcript:

These are computer generated, so expect some typos

Antoine Walter:

So, hi Graham, welcome to the show. Actually, you know, I always like to start with the postcard and in our short conversation before starting, you mentioned you are not that far away from the Heathrow airport, and I’m just wondering in these strange times, did you have the chance to pick a flight over the past six months to one year?

Graeme Pearce:

Well, absolutely not. Not from Heathrow. I suppose my only flight has been, we had a short holiday flight out of Stansted between lockdowns during last summer, but he throw used to be a very common place that needed to go to do my international business. And that’s been out of the question for the last year. Unfortunately,

Antoine Walter:

The cool thing for our listeners is that for once we have someone that pronounces English like it shoot with the lovely British accent. So you are in Oxfordshire, right?

Graeme Pearce:

That’s right. I’m in a small village in South Oxford chair. I’ve lived here for more than 20 years and I was at a university at the university of Oxford. So I’ve come back to my roots by coming to live here. So it’s

Antoine Walter:

Because a couple of episodes ago we had an interview with Ken Brin innovation, which is named after Cambridge, but not the Cambridge from the UK to Cambridge from the U S so it’s good to see that we are coming back to the real roots. So Oxford like established university background. I mean, here we are in good old Europe. So, so thanks for that.

Graeme Pearce:

Okay. That’s, that’s good actually,

Antoine Walter:

A membrane specialist. And without trying to be insulting with your age, I’m a 40 year track record, which is amazing in that field. First, let me verify something. You know, when I was preparing for this interview, I found out to me, membranes was invented in the, in the sixties or eighties. And I found out that they around since the 18th century, is that right?

Graeme Pearce:

Yes. Obviously to be commercially useful, a membrane has to be very carefully controlled. So the pore size has to be precise. You need a narrow range of Pores of the particular size that you want. So you want a narrow pore size distribution, and that was a difficult task to achieve. I think in Germany, in the 1920s, there was a commercial development of UF membranes. And I think that was probably one of the earliest really strong developments in uses of, of membranes. But it, yes, it’s much more recent that we have a real commercial rollout of membrane technology

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Antoine Walter:

And talking about yourself. When was your first encounter with membrane technology?

Graeme Pearce:

So straight after my doctorate at Oxford, I went to BP chemicals research in whole and they said, well, we’ve got a, we’ve got a new that we want you to start up. It’s looking at separation technologies for the oil industry and the chemical industry. So the brief was across all, all separations technologies. I must confess, I hadn’t really heard of membranes at that point. They weren’t commercially used very much at all. They were little specialized US companies on the whole that had membranes for very sort of specific niche applications. So it looked as if it was an awful long way off from possibly becoming applicable for BP. So I did work on membrane developments there, but also other separation technologies like Pressure Swing Adsorption and crystallization and other things like that.

Antoine Walter:

So starting on that R and D side of things, then you evolved to other parts of the industry with the commercial application and now your consultancy. So can you guide us through your, your path?

Graeme Pearce:

So BP became excited about separations research. So we had our little group in hole where I started with BP chemicals, and then in other parts of BP, they also had some researchers who started working on, on separations. And by 1988, there were 80 people working on research in BP. So this was immensely costly for the company and they thought, well, we need to get some payback for all this money that we’re investing in, in separations research. So they decided to form a BP ventures company. So the standalone subsidiary within the group, and I was the process engineering manager of that company. But soon after setting it up and spending another vast fortune on helping us to set it up, they decided as BP, as oil companies often will, they decided to have a change of direction and they tried to sell the company and we put the finance together and we did a management buyout. So that was a tremendous opportunity because we bought no expense spared all the office furniture or equipment. So we were incredibly well-equipped for a startup company and they basically let us have it for next to nothing. Um, so thank you very much BP.

Antoine Walter:

And how did he develop from there? So you were all of a sudden a start-up in the membrane field and in the waste already in the water field at the time, or what was the intention?

Graeme Pearce:

Good point because, I mean, we, we had struggled to be honest in BP research to get our efforts in separations. Technology implemented. Obviously oil companies and chemical companies rely on distillations and they were looking for much lower energy alternatives, but it’s, it’s extremely difficult to get the business units to adopt anything that’s anything like a new or novel approach to do anything. So we felt we were hurling ourselves against rocks basically. And we decided when we were set up as a separate venture company, and especially after we became independent of BP, we decided to focus instead on the water market, because that was a much more clear cut of well-defined market. I mean, the two were in the water market. They too were very reluctant to adopt new technologies. And I remember in the early nineties going to potential municipal water companies in the UK and trying to promote the idea of using membranes.

And they literally would laugh at me and say, well, this is never going to happen. And then just within two or three short years, their attitude changed completely because of cryptosporidium that it was all simply down to that in the UK and in the U S there were some outbreaks of, this is a microorganism, which is a parasite it’s about four microns in diameter. It’s small enough that it can get through conventional treatment, but a membrane is a complete barrier. So that was a tremendously strong driver. This concern about cryptosporidium. We had outbreaks in the UK and the U S and then we got legislation, which was designed to ensure that companies removed it completely. And with total security. And that was the driver for membrane. So even though it was still an expensive technology at that stage, once you’ve got the driver, then the prices start to tumble because it’s not just one company rubbing their hands and saying, Oh, well, that’s great. The prices are high, but you have to do it. That’s fantastic. But you got other competitors coming in and the prices dropped like a stone. And quite soon a membrane technology was still a little expensive, but it was becoming more comparable and more acceptable for the user.

Antoine Walter:

So that was a membrane for drinking water. So I guess ultrafiltration if you remove cryptosporidium, right? That’s correct. Yeah. So was it used to replace sand filters or what was the application

Graeme Pearce:

In a way it was replacing sand filters, but basically in regard to cryptosporidium removal, the sand filters weren’t doing enough. So it had a unique niche within the marketplace. So if you had, maybe if you said, well, five or 10% of the water sources in any particular regional country might be susceptible to cryptosporidium, then the legislation said, well, on those five to 10% of sources, you have to put membranes. So membranes sort of competed in those early days with sand filters, but they competed at the, at the margins where you had these difficult challenges and where the sand filters couldn’t really do it.

Antoine Walter:

So that was the big kick in the membrane technology, which was suddenly existing on the water market. And how did it develop from there? I mean, at that time, so you were just launching your startup best equipped startup, but still a startup. And how did it evolve from there?

Graeme Pearce:

Well, so the startup eventually grew like crazy in the 1990s, because so from, because from tiny little beginnings and it’s not, I mean, it’s not just our company, but all of the membrane companies at the time had a similar roller coaster of a ride. And a lot of those companies had great success at establishing their technologies and became, you know, reasonably sized companies in the course of the 1990s. So you could say that around 1990 itself, you began to see the emergence of these drivers. You had, the problem of Cryptosporidium. Then by the mid nineties, you had legislation, especially in North America and the UK. I think in continental Europe, the cryptosporidium wasn’t recognized in quite the same way. It didn’t seem to be causing quite as many problems, but then in continental Europe, it was more a question of getting a virus or microorganism barrier and

Sort of moving away from relying on chlorine as a disinfection barrier. If you had a membrane barrier, you would be less reliant on chlorine. So that was the big driver, especially in the Netherlands and in France. And they adopted membrane technology in their drinking water industry. So their driver was a little bit different to the UK driver, but I think the UK driver had real teeth because the government had recently privatized the water industry and then having let them off the leash, they then had this great big hammer or club to beat and say, having made you private, you now have to do this and you have to meet this requirement. I mean, it was a, it was a very dramatic day. One of my colleagues described it as being like being on a start of a race and you’re all lined up and then someone presses the starting gun and off you go, and it was literally like that it was a crazy sort of gold rush day for the, uh, for the membrane companies.

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Antoine Walter:

And what brought you ultimately to consultancy?

Graeme Pearce:

I’ve always been interested in looking at the whole field of an issue. So obviously if you’re with company, you’ve become an advocate for that company, but my type of personality is I like to look at the other competitors products, and I like to sort of praise them for their good features, even though I might also be talking against them for their bad features. So I like to have this overall position where I’m not necessarily completely reliant just on my own advocating my own product or whatever. I like to have this overview.

Antoine Walter:

And now you have your own consultancy for over a decade and you dedicate to membranes,

Graeme Pearce:

Right? Yeah. So in 2005, I decided to launch the consultancy. And the idea was that I would help basically help the practitioners of membranes. So people who were either supplying membranes or using membranes and help to improve their experience, because as with any new technology, you know, I’ve given a rather gold-plated rosy view of things, but it has to be said that in those early days in the initial gold rush, as I describe it, there were some missteps because people were too aggressive in the designs of some of the plants. And maybe some of those early products had some innate weaknesses. So if you combine product weakness with aggressive design, clearly a proportion of those plans are not going to work out very well. And so I suppose my consultancy was developed around the idea of advising suppliers and users and trying to get the market to sort of reign itself in a little bit and be more realistic, be less aggressive in its design and to encourage suppliers to improve their products because they didn’t really need my encouragement. They were trying to do that anyway. And eventually after the first few years of the market, you know, you have to say that all of those suppliers that had initial issues on the whole managed to sort those issues out. So the products became better, more reliable, more resilient, and meanwhile designs have become less aggressive. But yeah, so basically that’s what my consultancy was focused on. It was trying to improve the experience of using membranes.

Antoine Walter:

Actually, we’ve touched this clean side of the membrane words so far, but I’d like today in the deep dive to look at another part of the membrane markets, which is the membranes used I guess mostly in wastewater treatment, but you’re going to tell me that probably it’s not only the case, but I’d like to dive into the membrane bioreactors. So MBRs and there are, I like to apologize in advance because I have to ask simple and simplistic questions, please. Don’t worry, I’m the stupid here. So I’m not insulting you, I hope, but sometimes you you’ll see that my questions are really simplistic. I think answer is now my first question, which is what MBR stands for. But first is my way to understand it. Correct. Is it membrane bioreactor?

Graeme Pearce:

That is correct. So a membrane bio-reactor is basically combining the biological reaction stage of wastewater treatment with a membrane barrier. And so we shortened that by just saying membrane bioreactor. So it’s an interesting development that in parallel to the frenzy around membranes, in clean water in the 1990s and getting ready for the drinking water market, there was another frenzy happening in the neighboring market of wastewater, which was around companies trying to get a membrane technology applied in wastewater. So that ran in parallel during the 1990s. And there was a very strong advocate at that time, of course it’s still present, but under a different name so that the initial advocate was Zenon. And they were basically, it was a bit like the lonely prophet in the wilderness. I always think of it like that because, whereas in the clean water side, we had governments on our side, we had legislation on our side and we had a whole industry turning to us in, in great excitement that we could solve that problem. On the wastewater side, the Zenon people were basically telling industry, this is what the future is going to look like. And for a long time, nobody paid much attention to them, or didn’t really accept what they were saying or were saying, it’s going to always be too expensive. It’s never going to work. It’s too technically difficult. So they didn’t get the legislative drivers that the clean side got

Antoine Walter:

Exactly. That would be my question. What was the driver? Why were they so strongly convinced that that was going to be the future if they didn’t have neither the industry nor the regulation that had their back. So

Graeme Pearce:

There’s two, eventually you could say there’s two drivers in wastewater treatment. One is that the discharges of our treated wastewater to rivers needs to be improved. So the driver for that came from in the European union. This is, came from the EU wastewater treatment directive. I think that dates to 19. Oh, Oh yeah. Okay. The water framework directive is 2006. So there was a much earlier piece of legislation, which was very important for wastewater treatment in terms of discharges. And that was the urban wastewater treatment directive. Okay. And so, but it didn’t say to companies, okay, you’re doing it. This with conventional technology, that’s no good any longer, you need to switch the membranes. I mean, you couldn’t possibly read that into the legislation and implementing the legislation. You could do it with the old technology. So you could say it’s sort of a driver. You basically have to improve standards sort of bit by bit case by case, but it’s not a sweeping statement.

So that was the first, that was the first type of driver, the discharge improvement driver. And then the next driver, which has only really come to pass in very recent years, is the driver for reuse actually in the European union. We’re only just getting now in 2021, we’re only just getting our first real legislation that is going to control, reuse quality, and really encourage, reuse up to now. It’s always been very sort of approximate if you like, and sort of loose that driver has not really had any teeth now lost. There’s a proper legislative reuse driver, but you know, we’re in 2021. So MBRs had to become established without even though your reuse would be there. One of the primary objectives potentially for MBRs, it’s not had legislation behind it to make people adopt the technology.

Antoine Walter:

Where does it MBR fits into a treatment train? Yeah, that’s a good, I mean, it’s a good question because I mean, you know, you could say, well, conventional,

Graeme Pearce:

No activated sludge is the combination of biology, bacteria and nutrients, the bacteria, and the micro organisms break down the nutrients. It creates sludge. You have a big tank, you rely on gravity for a lot of those solids to settle. You then might have a sand filter that would move some, but not all of the remaining solids. Then you have a treated wastewater. So that’s the existing status quo. If you like from more than a hundred years ago, when MBR comes along, it basically deletes the whole of the train and says, no, we can do it better. If we start all over again with a much smaller bio-reactor we do the same biological reaction as you might do in the conventional activated sludge, but it’s all intensified. It has a much smaller footprint because the solids, rather than relying on gravity to eventually allow them to settle, you strike a membrane barrier.

So those solids can’t get out by operating at two higher flow rate, they’re prevented by that membrane barrier. So the whole thing becomes small and compact and efficient, but it means that all of that hardware that you installed from decades or a century ago, all those huge concrete tanks suddenly become redundant. So in a sense, in a developed economy, such as in Europe, that’s not good for introducing something that’s so radical because you’re not taking advantage of the infrastructure that was in there in the first place. Then that’s why in China, where they haven’t had that infrastructure development, suddenly this solution makes tremendous sense that they can leap, frog. Everything that we’ve done for a hundred years use MBRs to solve all of their problems in a fraction of the footprint with much better treatment quality, and suddenly they’re in a better state than we are.

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Antoine Walter:

So if I get to right, if you don’t have existing infrastructure, all things compared to an MBR is the best solution over conventional tanks, activated sludge clarifiers, the full treatment train. So if you start out of the blue, do it like the Chinese, and that explains why two third of the MBRs in the word, are installed in China

Graeme Pearce:

Well, that’s right, and this it’s an amazing statistic. And all of those big MBRs tend to go into China. I would think that that’s probably true what you say, but I mean, one of the caveats is that if the quality of the discharge water is not that important, maybe you would still go with a conventional works, but in most cases, and especially in China, where they have polluted rivers, and they’re trying to reduce that pollution. If you put in a new wastewater treatment works, why would you not go for the Mercedes of treatment? We would say the rolls Royce in this country, but why would you not go for the very best, get a really good treated water quality, and also in a tiny footprint in comparison with conventional, because that’s so important in Chinese cities growing like crazy, you can’t have these. I mean, if you go to London, for example, you’ll see some of those Victorian water treatment works and it looks like they’re occupying a number of football fields all joined together, you know, with their slow sand filters and so on. And they occupy so much real estate. I mean, it wouldn’t be conceivable that you could build something like that these days, you know, so MBR and compact footprint makes a tremendous amount of sense.

Antoine Walter:

So the compact footprint makes it probably a very easy and logical go-to as well for industrial applications.

Graeme Pearce:

It’s true. And of course in industry that footprint saving is an extremely important driver. And I would think obviously when you’re in the municipal arena, what you’re looking at is a 20 year life cycle and you’re balancing your costs, your operating and capital costs in a different way in industry, you’re looking at a much shorter time horizon and the drivers are different. So I think also in the industrial context, the treatment challenges can be more difficult because municipal waste is sort of similar ish all around the world. Industrial waste varies according to what the factories are doing and what contaminants they’re adding. So there’s a lot of variation and the MBR can certainly sort of match that reality and become very effective in those different circumstances.

Antoine Walter:

So even if the MBR still relies on biological treatment, it is much more resilient than activated sludge.

Graeme Pearce:

I would say it is it’s because at the end of the day, the biology is closely related. It’s not identical, but it’s a similar situation. But I think in the MBR, because you’ve got a membrane barrier, you’ve got a degree of tolerance there that will ensure that you always will get a good treated water quality, no matter what’s happening to the biology. I mean, you might sort of foul up your membranes and cause other issues. So, you know, there is definitely a lot of optimization that needs to be done, but it certainly can perform very effectively

Antoine Walter:

Talking about this membrane barrier. It’s probably a good time to make some anatomy of these MBRs, which type of membranes do you see the most applied nowadays in MBRs?

Graeme Pearce:

Because we are very reliant on chlorine use in wastewater treatment. In general, the membranes that we tend to use are based upon those polymers, which are extremely tolerant to chlorine. And the best known example is PVDF. So we see a lot of membrane bio-reactors, whether they have a flat sheet or hollow fiber formats, a lot of them use PVDF one or two examples of some others, but it is an interesting question because there have been some developments recently in ceramic materials for the mainstream drinking water industry and sea water RO pretreatment, and those ceramic materials are beginning to gain a little traction. They haven’t really done so in MBR very much, but there is just a sign that they might do. And the reason that there might be an interest there is that the ceramics allows you a very aggressive sort of mechanical and chemical cleaning action.

Antoine Walter:

Actually, it makes me think of one of your excellent blog posts, which I read on your website, which was addressing this ceramic versus polymeric. And from my understanding, from what you were explaining, there was a first battle in the nineties where polymeric had the upper hand because they were much more cost-effective, but recent advances in ceramic membranes. And it had a LiqTech on that same microphone a couple of weeks ago where we addressed it, that same topic. And they said that they know have a better way to do ultrafiltration with ceramic membranes. So I think that all goes together in, in the direction of filling a bit more the furnaces. And if you fill more the furnaces, then the cost of ceramics also go down. So is that a trend that we see for the future?

Graeme Pearce:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean basically ceramic materials the material from which the ceramic membrane is made are very inexpensive and could potentially compete. What adds a lot of costs is the manufacturing process with multiple firings in a furnace at high temperature. And ultimately that adds a lot of cost. You need quite a lot of labor input. You need expensive capital equipment, you need a long manufacturing time. So the ceramics end up being very expensive compared with the polymerics, but this is an issue of scale. And it’s also, as you say, an issue of manufacturing optimization that as you improve the way we do things, it doesn’t need that mean that we necessarily will have such a big difference in pricing as time develops. And we’ve seen ceramic prices fall and they’ve become progressively more competitive. But then on the other hand, the performance advantages they offer certainly addresses a lot of the differential anyway.

So I see ceramics becoming very important in drinking water first. And I didn’t really think about the issue of wastewater treatment and MBR until actually you invited me to do this podcast. And I did a webinar training just earlier this week with a company called Techna beers. And literally as I was presenting this ceramic option and basically saying, or sort of implying this will never get anywhere. But as I was thinking about it, I was presenting. I was thinking actually, it’s got some important advantages because one of the things that this disadvantage with the ceramic is that it’s rigid. And if you think of an MBR operation with all those polymeric hollow fibers, when you do the aeration, which is the sort of core cleaning process for the membrane, but it’s also needed for the biological action of the bacteria. When you do that, ration, the air moves the fibers and as the fibers shake, the solids fall off.

So the flexibility of the polymeric is inherent to the MBR and is a critical part of the process. And I was thinking, well, of course, with a ceramic, if you aerate, you’re not to move the ceramic membranes, they’re rigid. So it’s not going to work so well. But of course, what you can do with a ceramic is that you can use an explosive backwash and that’s, what’s done in the, in the water treatments fair. And that explosive backwash is found to be many times more effective than the normal backwash of a normal membrane. So maybe as we start to think about ceramics and MBR, we might find that in fact, they do extremely well. And as I gave my webinar presentation, I became more and more enthusiastic about the possibility of ceramic. So I started out being sort of rather downbeat. I ended up being a much more optimistic

Antoine Walter:

Somehow we could be at a tipping point. And that’s the difficulty of, of the tipping point is that’s future will tell, but

Graeme Pearce:

That’s true. But of course, potentially being at a tipping point is what a consultant loves. Because if you think you might be at a tipping point, you better go and ask a consultant to see, well, what do they think? So I’m very, very pleased if we are possibly at a tipping point and I can maybe provide some advice

Antoine Walter:

Discussing with Haris Kadrispahic from LiqTech. He was very enthusiast about now being the tipping point. But of course he might be a bit as you mentioned, when you said that you wanted to have a look at the full industry and you went to consultancy he’s on the other end of the market, he’s looking at his own solution is an advocate.

Graeme Pearce:

Yes, yes. He’s an advocate. Yeah. So yes, but anyway, I, I would certainly agree that we may be at a tipping point. I mean, sometimes, I mean, we think of a tipping point is a sharp point between before and after, of course it might be a little bit more smooth out the transition, so I could see ceramics progressively making more impact and then becoming a dominant technology at a future point. I could definitely see that happening. You mentioned

Antoine Walter:

Pretty fast that there there’s flat sheet and hollow of fiber. What are the perks and the drawbacks from both of them? Is it really a topic or is it really every specific manufacturer does one or the other, and that doesn’t make a big difference?

Graeme Pearce:

Well, you’ve raised a couple of interesting points in that question. I mean, actually just to that latter point about each manufacturer, being an advocate of their solutions in the drinking water sector, we’ve had the creation of portfolio companies with portfolios of offerings. So Suez used to be the submerged PVDF outside feed format advocates for years and years, and would basically argue against anybody with anything else gradually by acquisition and internal development. They now offer membrane products over the whole range of options of polymeric in the field. And Dupont also by acquisition has done the same. So whereas before 2015, every company was basically an advocate of a particular format or configurational type since 2015, we’ve got these two portfolio companies and gradually, I mean, obviously the individual sales groups have the history of being either with one of the legacy products or another, but gradually over time it will integrate and they will begin to offer the best possible solution for each application, each region, et cetera.

Now in MBR, we are still in the position of companies being advocates, and they basically offer a type of technology and would not offer the two options. So we don’t have portfolio companies in MBR. So what we have is basically suppliers either use the hollow fiber concept or the flat sheet concept with the hollow fiber concept, it’s going to be more cost effective at very large scale. The flat sheet is going to be more cost-effective at smaller scale and more difficult to treat feeds. There are various pros and cons in relation to the tolerance of contaminants like fibers and hairs that might clog up the channels of the feed and other things. So there’s, there’s a number of pros and cons on each side, the two technologies have an overlap at certain for certain projects, but on the whole they’re trying to address different parts of the market. So you get strong advocates for each one, but I think most people would agree that one or other solution is probably going to be the right solution in any particular case,