Two significant business developments for Aquafortus will see its wastewater recovery technology being used in the US oil and gas sector and Europe's industrial wastewater applications.
Aquafortus’ US licensee has entered into a joint venture with Pilot Corporation, a Berkshire Hathaway backed company and the tenth largest private company in the US. In addition, Aquafortus has signed a second, Europe-based licensee.
“These developments represent significant milestones and reflect both the quality of and environmental potential for Aquafortus technology to improve how wastewater is processed on a global scale,” says Daryl Briggs (pictured), CEO and founder of Aquafortus Technologies.
“As a kiwi-start up founded only five years ago, and launched internationally last year, we are incredibly proud of this early stage momentum that has seen us partner with two well capitalised licensees in the recognised and reputable markets of Europe and the U.S.”
JV with Berkshire Hathaway and Pilot Corporation backed Hyperion Water Technologies
PetroH2O, Aquafortus’ US-based licensee, has entered a joint venture with Pilot Corporation to form Hyperion Water Technologies. Pilot Corporation is the tenth largest private company in the US. In 2017, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway invested USD2.76 billion for a 38.6% stake in Pilot and has plans to increase that stake to 80% by 2023.
The joint venture has been established to bring Aquafortus technology to the US oil and gas market and launches with a USD25 million commitment from Hyperion to deploy the Aquafortus ZLD technology in 2020.
In addition, Hyperion will purchase its first Aquafortus commercial processing plant in April 2020 with a capacity of 10,000 barrels of brine per day. When operational, this plant is expected to generate a royalty payment of USD300,000 to Aquafortus, a chemical sale of USD2 million towards the end of 2020 and USD1 million of ongoing annual chemical sales to this one plant alone.
Following the commissioning of this plant, the licensee will look to scale up to a 100,000 barrel-per-day plant over 12-months. If this plant operates to capacity it should generate a USD3 million royalty payment to Aquafortus and the sale of substantial chemical volumes.
Aquafortus expands into Europe
Aquafortus has also signed a second licensee, Lenntech, a globally respected engineering firm based in the Netherlands. The licence signed is a non-exclusive agreement for industrial wastewater applications in Europe.
Signing Lenntech allows Aquafortus to speed up its commercial deployment by having more parties constructing “reference-site” processing plants. This will also result in a greater diversity
of reference sites in recognised territories and applications. The more reference sites, the lower the barrier to entry for signing future licensees.
Lenntech has two highly motivated customers that Aquafortus has been working closely with for the past eight months. The first customer has paid to secure early access to Aquafortus ZLD technology while the second has a wastewater application that will scale up to 8,400 m3/day. This stands to generate a royalty of USD4.2 million to Aquafortus as well as significant volumes of on-going absorbent and regenerant chemical sales.
“The effective processing of wastewater generated by industries all over the world is a significant, and expensive environmental problem,” says Briggs. “Aquafortus is committed to bringing the most advanced and economic water recovery technologies to more markets and more industries globally”.