Country Reports - Benelux

Water & the 4th Industrial Revolution

August 2017

Country Reports - Benelux

Water & the 4th Industrial Revolution

August 2017

Menno's keynote at BlueTech Forum took delegates on a global tour of innovations addressing the food-water nexus, circular economy, water scarcity and business models needed to create and deliver projects. BlueTech Chief Executive Paul O'Callaghan took time ahead of the event to find out more about his perspective on water reuse and sustainable water management. "Water challenges around the world are driven by many things," says Menno Holterman, "but especially water scarcity, a lack of groundwater and aquifers drying up. I believe industry is making a great deal of progress, which is what we see in a lot of our projects around the world. We see clients now actively asking for integrated solutions, including finance and operations & maintenance, which is a seismic shift. We also see a lot of industries, including those that have been invited to participate in BlueTech Forum, making water reuse, for example, mandatory. Nijhuis is working with big corporations like Nestle, Mars and Unilever. Until about two years ago, water reuse was always requested, but only implemented in water scarce areas, because of the high cost and not having a business case to pay back the investment. Now we see that all the large corporations are making reuse mandatory not only on greenfield projects, but on a lot of brownfield projects and upgrades and expansions of existing plants." Holterman says he sees Nijhuis Industries' key global accounts taking responsibility and starting to implement these kinds of measures. However, currently, the recycled water is only used for non-core processes and non-product water. He explains, "Most investment in new plants is made with a financial horizon of 20-25 years, so you have to make sure you secure sufficient water to operate a plant, secure their license to operate and meet their growing production requirements. It's not always easy, because you have to expend more energy in order to recover the water. So in terms of the water-energy nexus, it's necessary to identify the tipping point between investing in additional water capacity versus the amount of energy you have to expend."