Comments
As India faces water shortage despite being endowed with 7,000 km of coastline and 900 mm of annual rainfall, a Finnish global water chemistry company Kemira is actively pursuing business opportunities in waste water treatment and desalination in the emerging Asian market.
A €2-billion company, Kimera operates in 40 countries in about 100 locations and employs close to 5,000. The company's main customers are from paper, textile, petrochemicals, metals and mining as also food industries. Municipalities too are on the company radar.
The 90-year-old Helsinki-based multinational set up its India operations in 2008 in Hyderabad with focus on the Asia-Pacific region which is seen as potential growth market for the company's products and services.
“Our mission is efficient use and reuse of water,” Mr Harri Kerminen, President and CEO, told a group of visiting Indian journalists, adding, “Our focus is on India, China and Indonesia”.
Kemira estimates Indian market potential at about $300 million and in pursuance of the potential, has entered into a partnership last year with a leading water infrastructure company, IVRCL.
The company has a strong manufacturing base in Vishakhapatnam. Currently, it is working on four desalination pilot plants, one of which is located in Chennai, the company chief pointed out. Kemira's expertise lies in pre-treatment of saline water.
“Water and energy are linked in many ways. Our research shows waste water treatment can help generate electricity,” the Vice-President for R&D and Technology, Mr Kai Jansson, said. Strongly suggesting that desalination, waste water reuse and rainwater harvesting can help bridge the growing demand-supply gap, the company representative said India offers tremendous potential for Kemira's products and services.
Competition for water use — in agriculture, industry and household — is set to worsen. Rapid urbanisation is seen expanding the demand for water due to which all previous plans of water management are sure to go awry. Water will become such a big problem in large cities that funds will have to be specially allocated to address the problem, Mr Kerminen cautioned.
Comments
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.