Singapore-based wastewater treatment company De.mem (ASX: DEM) has sold a water treatment plant located in the Nghe An province in Vietnam.
The plant was purchased by local Vietnamese company Hung Thanh Environmental Ltd for approximately $AUD 510,000 ($USD 400,000). Prior to the sale, De.mem designed, built, owned and operated the plant under what’s known as a Build, Own, Operate (BOO) scheme.
The purchase price will be paid in instalments over the next 30 months, with the first instalment of $AUD $240,000 ($USD 190,000) due immediately. In the short-term, Hung Thanh Environmental Ltd also intends to adopt De.mem’s proprietary membrane technology as part of an upgrade of the facility.
The water treatment plant uses De.mem’s patented hollow fibre membranes to generate high-quality water output for the nearby municipality and a number of factories. Using De.mem’s technology, the performance of the plant can be monitored remotely.
The sale represents a further validation of De.mem’s water treatment technology and the company’s growing exposure in the Asia Pacific region.
“The sale of De.mem’s water treatment plant marks a significant transaction within the Vietnamese water treatment market, where membrane based water treatment is emerging, ” said CEO Andreas Kroell.
“The transaction underlines De.mem’s growing brand and market position in Vietnam as a supplier for modern water treatment technology. It also brings along a strong validation of our BOOT/BOO (Build, Own/Operate, Transfer / Build, Own, Operate) product offering,” he added.
As Vietnam becomes a more industrialised nation, the pressure on the existing water and waste management infrastructure becomes greater.
According to Austrade, the Vietnamese government has ambitious plans to upgrade its wastewater treatment capacity so that by 2025 all urban cities will have treatments systems and 70-80 percent of municipal wastewater will be collected and treated properly.
In 2015, a study from Hanoi University estimated that Vietnam had invested $USD 228 million per year over the past five years in wastewater management projects. The increasing demand for wastewater treatment represents a huge opportunity for companies such as De.mem operating in Vietnam.
De.mem designs, builds and operates innovative systems for decentralised water treatment in the industrial, municipal and residential sectors. It launched its first overseas water treatment plant in Vietnam in 2013, and since then has completed a number of projects in Singapore, Vietnam and Cambodia. De.mem was established in Australia in 2016 and has plans to take on projects in China, Europe and Australia where water treatment services are multi-billion-dollar industries.
