Advanced desalination membrane-maker NanoH2O is to build a fully integrated manufacturing plant in Liyang, China, a city in the Yangtze River Delta, 250 km west of Shanghai.
The 10,000 m² facility will be the company’s second fully integrated manufacturing plant; the first is in Segundo, California. The China facility requires a total investment of US$ 45 million and is expected to be operational by the end of 2014.
China plans to increase its seawater reverse-osmosis (RO) desalination capacity three-fold by 2015. The overall membrane market in China is estimated to grow more than 20% per year over the next 10 years.
The Chinese government’s current five-year plan also calls for 70% of equipment used in desalination plants to be produced domestically. Establishing a new NanoH2O facility in China will allow the company to take advantage of the growing domestic market for both desalination and wastewater treatment.
“Just two years after our commercial entry into the RO membrane and desalination markets, the opening of this second facility marks a major expansion for our company that will allow us to support a rapidly growing international market,” said Jeff Green, CEO and chairman of NanoH2O. “The Liyang plant is the first RO membrane manufacturing facility in China to utilize advanced nanotechnology.”