Dubai: Metito is a UAE-based international water desalination and waste-water treatment specialist. From its inception in 1958, the company has been an industry leader in designing water supply, wastewater treatment and water desalination systems in the region.
Its world headquarters for Europe, Africa and Asia is located in the UAE with regional headquarters in Egypt and Indonesia.
Metito's diverse geographic base is supported by the development of local-specific technologies for desalination and water and waste-water treatment.
Metito recently acquired a total of $40 million (Dh146.8 million) in financial support from the IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, and NBK Capital to access to basic water supply and sanitation services in China, the Middle East and North Africa where water is scarce.
Rami Ghandour, executive director of Metito talks to Gulf News about the industry in the region and what areas we need to focus on in order to conserve our limited resources.
Gulf News : How are desalination and water treatment issues being addressed in the region?
Rami Ghandour: There is building taking place in each of the GCC countries and they are in the process of installing more capacity to desalinate water. But there is also a lot to be done on the demand side.
If you look at how to meet an acute water shortage in a region that does not have much potable water in it, you have to either desalinate more water or you have to do better with what you've currently got. There is capacity-building taking place and there is a lot that can be done in terms of on-site management, so, before building more capacity, what governments are doing but clearly need to do a lot more of is examine how to get more out of what you currently have in place. That is utilising the water per capita. In terms of what projects are going on, yes it's clearly products requiring millions if not billions on new capacity but there's also other things that can be done that will reduce the amount of water that is utilised.
In the GCC we have the highest per capita water utilisation rates in the world. It's mind-boggling to think that we are in what is clearly the driest part of the world and we consume more water than somewhere like the US or UK per person.
There is clearly a lot of opportunity to be more efficient. Simple things like educating people to act in a conservative manner can help a lot. For example, when brushing teeth, a majority of the UAE population probably don't turn the tap off versus in other countries that have had strong advertising campaigns where they would be conditioned to do so.
In addition to domestic consumption, there is very heavy consumption for irrigation, agriculture. The least you can do is irrigate types of crops that are low on water consumption.
I would say it's a bit of both supply and demand. I don't think you can just do one without doing the other. More capacity needs to come online and there is some structure taking place to bring additional capacity online but on the demand side there is also a lot of work to be done.
What are the main reasons why people don't know the value of water in the region?
More often than not water is subsidised in this part of the world which means people are not paying the true economic cost of the water they have and they have very little incentive to actually care about being more efficient.
Here in Dubai, there are people who don't have to pay for water and for those that do, they typically pay about $2 per cubic metre. In Berlin, the typical cost for the end consumer for water is about $7 per cubic metre. In Dubai, we have to desalinate the water while in Berlin they have a natural filtration.
In Dubai we are paying the highest rate in the GCC with other emirates such as Sharjah and Abu Dhabi charging less. Water pricing is extremely political. Populations around the world are extremely averse to paying the true value of water. Part of that is a mentality that water is a God-given right and something that should not be paid for.
My personal opinion is that if the government intends to subsidise certain segments of the population for whatever reasons then I would urge them not to use water as a means to achieve that.
Part of what we do is involvement in projects where you look at managing water distribution right through to the end customer and look at how to get a more governed system given the resources at hand.
How important is water re-use? And what is being done to encourage people to utilise re-used water?
Part of what we fundamentally believe in is the concept of water reuse and unfortunately the extent of water re-use across the GCC is not that high. Often it's a psychological issue. On average when one drinks from a tap in London the water has typically been through the human body seven times. It's the same in pretty much every major city with a national water supply. So the fact that we don't look at reusing the water as extensively as one can is a great shame. In Singapore they've gone as far as bottling it and marketing it to the general population.
The water supply entering the system is actually perfectly good quality drinkable water. The issue lies in the distribution system particularly in the water storage in the homes. You see a lot of roof-top taps where water is stored before it's delivered for use in the house. That poses a risk and is not carefully monitored and that's why typically people do not drink tap water in a city like Dubai.
However, drinking water is only a very small portion of the water that is consumed. It would be very nice to be able to drink the water coming out of the tap and do away with the vast demand for bottled water, but it's a very small part of the pie if you take into consideration commercial re-use of water for irrigation purposes.
What kind of investments are going into the water desalination and waste treatment industry?
There's continual investment going on but with the city growing the way Dubai has been growing, at least in the past, the focus is more on keeping up with demand rather than improving the quality. A lot of it is in the home outside the jurisdiction of the authority.
Investment should focus on a combination of regulation, pricing, and advertising through education.
From a regulation point of view, for example a ruling was passed that all new district cooling parts must be running on reused water. But when it does get implemented it will help.
How have the different emirates approached this?
Different Emirates have approached it differently. For example in Abu Dhabi what they've done is set up something call the Regulatory Supervision Bureau (RSB) which is meant to be an independent body that looks at water tariffs. They have aims to bring the tariffs up. How much they're going to do that and by when I don't know but that is one way to do it.
How has the financial crisis affected the growth of the industry?
People are definitely more conscious about what's happening given the financial crisis. Investments into hard assets have slowed down initially but I would say a lot of them are as effective. For example there's a lot of new build that was planned to serve all these new real estate developments that was taking place. As the real estate developments slowed down it meant that the need for the build slowed down. But at the same time there is also a lot of new build that can serve the existing population where there's a shortage.
The important thing is the government says it is a priority and during times of economic crisis sensible governments realize that it is actually better to pump more public spend into water over other infrastructure. The water sector has been affected by the economic crisis but has been affected a lot less than most other sectors.
In regards to technology, which way is the industry heading.
I think going more green and being more environmentally friendly is critical and a top priority for all water companies and water authorities. If we look at it on the waste water side, waste water treatment is by definition green.
In terms of desalination, yes it needs to be managed properly so that its impact on the environment is minimal if at all and that's something that everybody is conscious of. On the other hand, everyone is looking at how one improves cost efficiency.
Things don't change over night as they would in other sectors but there would be slow but sure improvement taking place across technology. One point of technology is also how you utilise and optimise it.
For example, in our plants in China, they are actively trying to control the power so that they utilise it the least during the peak hours and then do as much as they can during the off peak hours. Something like that which is an extremely green thing to do and is also an extremely cost effective thing to do. We need just as much focus on the hardware as there is on the efficiency of the software
Another neglected part is leakage management. Is this still an issue?
Yes it is and the good thing in the GCC is that a lot of the infrastructure is relatively new by global standards but still there's still a lot of room for improvement. We actively provide services to government utilities where we do non-revenue water management or leakage reduction. That is something quite fundamental to what we and other players in the industry provide.
