Strategic acquisition to boost our offering to global wastewater treatment customers

We are pleased to announce that we have acquired water modelling R&D technology software company AqMB Holdings Pty Ltd for a total consideration of A$1.35m.

Founded in Sydney in 2014, the AqMB (Aqueous Material Balance) business has developed a “Digital Twin” – a neural network-based machine learning tool that models chemical and biological processes in water treatment plants to predict and optimise operations for water network assets (AqMB IP). The AqMB IP is also applicable across all water treatment plants including those in mining, industrial production, infrastructure sites as well as the waste and wastewater sectors.

The image above was sourced from AQMB's website and shows a mockup of process modelling software at a wastewater treatment plant.

To date the AqMB IP has been used to support consulting projects for companies including Veolia and Jacobs, mainly in the design stage of wastewater treatment plants. The acquisition opportunity is to embed the AqMB IP in Envirosuite’s cloud-based solution suite and offer it as an ongoing operational application via a SaaS model.

Moving beyond odour management and into asset management at wastewater treatment plants

For Envirosuite’s existing and future wastewater treatment plant customers this acquisition takes Envirosuite beyond the compliance threshold of odour management solutions, and into the core operations to directly address two of their most significant operating cost items; chemicals and energy.

Prior to committing to the acquisition, the AqMB IP was trialed at the Yinghai recycled water treatment plant in Beijing to determine to what extent the application could optimise chemicals and electricity usage at the plant while still ensuring compliance with increasingly stringent local regulations around water quality and discharge.

The trial indicated a potential reduction of up to 35% or A$500,000 equivalent in annual electricity and chemical usage at the plant. The Yinghai plant is owned by Beijing Enterprises Water Group (HK listing code 0371) that has an asset portfolio that includes 500 of China’s 3300 wastewater and recycled water treatment plants. Globally Envirosuite has so far identified as many as 25,000 applicable sites which could benefit from the technology.

In consultation with its existing wastewater customers and strategic partners, Envirosuite had determined that a reduction of 25% in plant operating costs would be the key hurdle to ensure that the AqMB IP had a strong prospect for widespread industry adoption. The economic benefits are expected to improve further once the AqMB IP is embedded in an operational software solution.

Developing a 'smart water' product solution to launch commercially within 6 months

Envirosuite is now accelerating the development of a new “smart water” product solution that will be launched commercially within the next six months. The new solution will combine the strength of the AqMB IP for the modelled effects of biological and other processes on chemical and energy inputs, with EVS’s exclusively licenced SeweX algorithms to monitor and prolong the operational life of water collection and distribution infrastructure. This will enable Envirosuite to go to market with a proprietary end-to-end smart water product that aims to significantly improve the economics and environmental outcomes for water asset operators.

We aim to play an increasingly important role for water asset operators around the world who are looking to solve problems relating to water supply, quality and scarcity via digital transformation.

The acquisition of AqMB is a very significant step towards achieving our vision to unlock value beyond compliance and apply our augmented environmental modelling software to directly assist customers to optimise their working assets and reduce expensive and polluting chemical inputs.

Find out how Envirosuite can help your operation harness the power of Environmental Intelligence in our video below.