Investors seeking desalination openings are largely denied pure-play opportunities and have to consider exposure to other business areas according to a report by technologies business analyst Nanalyze.
From a study of the top ten engineering procurement and construction contractors in desalination, the analyst found that only about 50% of their revenues came from water treatment and, of that, an even smaller amount came from desalination. Only Singapore’s Hyflux came close to a pure play option said Nanalyze.
“With the exception of maybe Hyflux, most of these companies have far too little exposure in desalination to justify investing solely for that purpose,” it said.
“The whole idea of a pure-play investment is to avoid taking unintended bets, on Italian infrastructure projects for example,”
The companies studied, in order of desalination asset output volumes during 2000- 11, were:
France’s Veolia,
Korea’s Doosan Group,
General Electric of the US,
Italy’s Fisia Italimpianti,
Degremont of France,
IDE of the US,
Spain’s Acciona,
Singapore’s Hyflux,
Befesa of Spain, and
Sadyt/Valoriza also of Spain.