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SINGAPORE – André Stoltz calls his company's flagship product a "super absorbent" sponge: a carbon fiber filter made from recycled paper and cotton that can suck oil or industrial contaminants from the water.
EcoWorth, a start-up from the National University of Singapore three years ago, has already raised about $ 1 million in grants, angel investments and development projects to commercialize its airgel technology. carbon fiber".
After a series of successful tests, the company is seeking new funds to develop the technology and take advantage of the expected demand for new water purification technologies, such as Hyflux, the operator of the city's largest desalination plant. State on the verge of liquidation.
The Singapore government announced last week that it was to take control of Singapore's largest desalination plant on May 17 in order to secure the country's water supply.
The disappearance of the company, which was once a high-flying enterprise, as well as price discrepancies with Malaysia, which provides about 40% of Singapore's water needs, have highlighted persistent problems of shortage of electricity. water in Singapore.
"Singapore wants to be independent of Malaysia and have independent water management," said Stoltz, who hopes the government will put more pressure on companies to keep and treat their wastewater, which will create opportunities for startups such as EcoWorth. "We find that the legislation is tightening and that the [Public Utilities Board] is pushing industries to install their own wastewater treatment system. This is the market in which we must enter. & # 39; & # 39;
Since the break-up of Malaysia in 1965, Singaporean rulers have begun to make their voices heard – state-sponsored radio commercials and radio jingles urge citizens to save water – the government has invested heavily in a strategy of "four national taps".
With two-thirds of the island designated as water catchment areas, rainwater – the first of the "taps" – is collected in 17 reservoirs. This reserve is supplemented by the second faucet, wastewater, which is processed in one of the country's five "NEWater" factories.
But the last two taps – desalinated sea water and water imported from Malaysia – now seem a bit squeaky.
After his surprise victory in last May's elections, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who has notoriously perverse relations with Singapore, described as "morally false" a 1962 treaty in which Malaysia agreed to distribute $ 1.1 billion. liters of water a day at the border at less than $ 0.002 per 1,000 liters.
At the same time, the cost of running the Singapore water system has almost tripled since the turn of the century, according to the Public Utilities Board, responsible for managing water supply. These costs are now pbaded on to consumers. In its 2017 budget, the government announced a 30% increase in water bills, the first increase of its kind since 2000.
"What Singapore does not want is to stop growing, from the point of view of development and from an economic point of view, because they have no water," said Cecilia Tortajada, research fellow at Institute of Water Policy of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. Nikkei said.
The need to find new ways to control domestic water resources and reduce treatment costs has made Singapore and its public water supply service particularly open to innovation, said Tortajada, adding that the PUB currently manages incubators, innovation competitions and also sponsors university research in a constant search for new ideas.
In response, the industry is growing to meet this demand.
Blue Ocean Memtech, another NUS company, is working to commercialize a new nanofiltration membrane that could, according to its founder, Fu Feng-Jiang, significantly reduce water treatment costs. Fu hopes the technology can be released in a few years.
Having already submitted a funding application to develop another new type of membrane and interesting to several other technologies, Mr. Fu said that many people were starting to realize that the water sector had a promising future in Singapore. "In my mind, I have some technologies to market," he said.
Others use the country's developing water technology ecosystem as a springboard for developing solutions for totally different markets.
Wateroam, founded by three university students in 2014, has built highly portable water filters, powered by a hand pump, that can provide drinking water to isolated communities and disaster areas.
The company's technology has already been deployed in more than 20 countries and used by relief organizations responding to humanitarian crises in Asia. He also found a modest but relatively lucrative market among "preppers" – most Americans worried about the apocalypse.
"We grew up in a relatively developed city where we open our taps every day and get clean water," said co-founder Lim Chong Tee. "We felt that Singapore being a pole of innovation, we should do more, we should help more people."
Start-up entrepreneurs point out that there are still gaps in the ecosystem, particularly with respect to the availability of funding to move innovations from the pilot scale to the full commercial scale. But this could change as water scarcity problems in Singapore and around the world worsen.
"Water, compared to its utility, is incredibly cheap," said Tom Ferguson, vice president of programs at Imagine H2O, an American accelerator of water technologies that recently opened a program. in Asia.
According to Ferguson, the "existential" challenge in countries like Singapore alters this calculation. "Singapore has an opportunity to really create an industry from that."
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