A box of tricks

“The company started 12 years ago in Sharjah and the focus was on precast infrastructure, such as water tanks, junction boxes and manhole covers. Over the course of the past nine and a half years, Septech Emirates has expanded into all these operating entities.

The contractors began saying they had a lot of precast requirements for sewerage and wanted thousands of manholes and water tanks but they were not really finding technologies here. So it was an organic development to look at decentralised water and wastewater packaged solutions,” he says.

“We are not trying to do everything but rather offer a focused specialised engineering product that revolves around water and wastewater primarily,” he notes.

“We are moving into the power industry to supply off-grid mobile solutions. In the northern emirates there is a lot of development happening in very remote locations without access to utilities, where our package water and wastewater work fantastically but the next stage of that is trying to connect the power.

So we are looking at packaged power now as well,” Kamel continues, adding that the firm ultimately aims to offer a small-scale, decentralised version of the integrated water and power projects, favoured by big utility providers.

Septech Emirates says it tries to bridge the gap created by booming development, whereby utilities cannot expand their power and water infrastructure fast enough to supply the ever-increasing number of consumers, and developers are forced to turn to temporary stand-alone facilities until the main systems catch up.

As for leisure and marinas, Kamel explains: “The idea behind building golf courses is that we know how to deliver and manage water, so golf courses was another organic shift.”

The division also builds aquariums, swimming pools and water theme parks and undertakes landscaping. “And with marinas, much of them are made from precast concrete and we know how to build and develop precast infrastructure well,” he adds.

The company has been enjoying triple-digit growth for a number of years now. Of the five business areas, Kamel says no single branch is outperforming the others: “Growth is on par across all divisions.

The marine division has shown explosive growth from the end of 2006 to today – we can confidently say we have 75% of that market in the UAE. But in water and wastewater, we are also getting a lot of packaged water contracts for up and coming golf courses.”

Septech Emirates’ parent company Septech Holding is hoping to emulate the success in the UAE elsewhere in the Middle East and beyond. Septech Saudi and Septech India are already being set up and plans are also afoot for offshoots in Qatar and Kuwait. Until now, these markets have been served by Septech Emirates.

With projections that the GCC region will invest some US $1.8 trillion in infrastructure projects in 2008 alone, there is plenty of business around for Septech to chase.

The company believes that what sets it apart from other players in the field is the scope of business that it can handle: its ability to combine desalination and sewage treatment with golf courses, marinas and precast concrete.

“We are an end-to-end solution. We have got engineering teams; we have got technical advisory teams; project management teams; operation and maintenance teams as well as commercial aspects,” comments Kamel.

Septech Emirates currently operates manufacturing and assembly plants in Ajman, Sharjah and Abu Dhabi, but in order to be able to exploit the opportunities in the country better, it will be consolidating its operations over the next 12-18 months in one site on the outskirts of Sharjah.

Once all its technicians and experts are in one location, the firm plans to expand its research and development activities to ensure its product range moves in line with market demand.

With the region forecast to face a major shortfall in power and water in the decades ahead, Septech Emirates believes the growing interest in water reuse in the UAE represents a golden opportunity for company.

It already has vast experience in designing packaged solutions for using treated sewage effluent for irrigation and grey water recycling systems for buildings and work camps.

The company predicts district cooling will be one of the main growth areas for water reuse with treated effluent eventually replacing potable water in chilling systems. While it does not plan to break into the well-established district cooling market as a provider, Septech Emirates sees itself being involved in supplying water recycling technologies.

Water and wastewater will be one of our biggest growth drivers for 2008 and probably for the next 20 years, given the requirements in this market and places like Saudi Arabia,” Kamel comments.

Another area that the firm is studying carefully is renewable energy. “We are looking at sustainable solutions, like supplying packaged products in our water division as an off-grid application, using wind and solar power.

This would be for remote sites and would primarily be for desalination, but maybe for water recycling systems as well,” reveals Kamel. “Solar and wind have the biggest potential here.

These are the renewable energies that Septech is looking at initially. I know in Abu Dhabi they have a project looking at solar and there are a couple of wind farms down there now, biofuels are big and geothermal power stations are being considered, but for our applications wind power and solar would be the limitations.

“We have looked at some of the wind map studies and probably the most suitable places will be Fujeirah, Oman and Yemen, possibly Abu Dhabi. The rest of the UAE is limited for wind power.

We have looked at the costs versus putting battery packs on solar photovoltaic panel systems and we think wind power would be more viable from an investment perspective.

The company is also taking a serious look at waste recycling and the potential for coupling energy recovery plants with desalination facilities. “This involves taking someone’s problem and turning that into resources we can then use to clean water.

There are several solutions around and we are talking to people to find the best technology.

We are not necessarily shifting tack to become a waste firm but it is a resource that can be used to create energy. It is an environmental solution and that fits in with Septech,” Kamel adds.

With Septech Emirates so eager to look for solutions to all manner of problems, its business portfolio can only be expected to keep on growing.