Water & Wastewater Asia May/June 2019

IN PERSON | 21
At the recent IE Expo China, SUEZ introduced its
AQUADVANCED ® solutions for Smart Network systems,
Urban Drainage systems and Smart Energy management
– Water & Wastewater Asia spoke to Steve Clark, chief executive
officer of SUEZ Asia, and Jose Maria Paredes, senior vice president
of advanced solutions at SUEZ Asia, to find out about the new
technologies and business models on “going digital”.
Q: SUEZ has a long history of ties with China. How has the
development of the environmental sector in China, as well as
China’s general business environment, changed over the past
years?
SC: The first big difference is that local partners are getting younger
and more sophisticated. As operators, the local competition is
increasing, and the local enterprises are showing more abundant and
stronger skills. We need to keep the edge that we have, and integrate
into local work.
On the other hand, I have noticed that transparency has improved.
When I first dealt with the domestic government officials, they
emphasised more on the GDP growth of the economy, but now I see
more people talk about how to solve the environmental protection
problems in their development process. It further proves that
environmental protection is not a stumbling block to GDP growth,
but can actually develop simultaneously in the process.
The SUEZ booth at IE Expo China
In terms of the business layout of SUEZ-WTS, we make use of
both domestic and foreign markets. We produce water treatment
equipment in Wuxi and export them to other markets, which leads
to very fast growth for our business. To put that in figures, in
2018, our revenue of SUEZ-WTS in Greater China has exceeded
US $200 million. And this year it is growing even more.
The emphasis on environmental protection is increasingly prominent
in China, which is why we concentrated on drinking water when we
first arrived, and are now arriving to the current wastewater and
waste treatment. 20 years ago, the homogenisation in China was
quite obvious – when foreign capital entered China to carry out
operations, they focused on Shanghai and Beijing as the best choice
for their location in terms of safety. Now environmental protection is
more standardised throughout the country.
Q: We know that SUEZ had a good year in 2018. How did the
Chinese market and trends in industrial water treatment contribute
to this?
SC: China was a major contributor to this: when we bought GE water,
which is now SUEZ-Water Technologies and Solutions (SUEZ-WTS),
China represented 10 per cent business of SUEZ-WTS. SUEZ-WTS
had a global growth of 6.7 per cent last year, while China doubled
the digit growth rate in terms of revenue.
Q: China is home to a large universe of chemical businesses, but
different industrial parks have different waste service providers.
Will SUEZ give some support to the smaller parks to improve their
operational safety?
SC: Absolutely yes. We don’t have a particular requirement on
size. If you are referring to hazardous waste, up till now, we’ve
concentrated mainly on incineration. Generally, there is a business
model which would have to be 10,000 tons or above to make that
possible.
What the government and industry care most about is the ability to
safely move hazardous waste around to collect, as well as subsequent
transportation and management, and the different technologies
needed. Indeed, we are currently providing services for them in
one of the biggest chemical industry parks, namely the Shanghai
Chemical Industry Park. But we also provide services in some fairly
small parks as well.
Water & Wastewater Asia • May / June 2019