Forbes Asia August 2017

AUGUST 2017 FORBES ASIA | 27

The sweet smell of sludge:

SafBon treatment plant

outside of Shanghai.

THIERRY COULON FOR FORBES

should keep that pace through 2020. But

the overall sector is highly fragmented,

with the biggest private player, Beijing

OriginWater Technology, having only a

4% share last year. SafBon ranked 12th

in the sector.

Xiong Zhiqiang of market researcher

Forward Industries Institute in Shen-

zhen says growth of conventional

wastewater treatment is plateauing and

desalination will continue to expand in

China. An even bigger segment is the

so-called Sponge City, an infrastructure

initiative to better utilize precipita-

tion and counter the risk of flooding

or drought. China aims to implement

it in 20% of urban areas by the end of

its latest five-year plan in 2020—with

nearly $150 billion in contracts during

the period—and 80% by 2030.

SafBon has 2 Sponge City proj-

ects—out of the country’s 30 pilots so

far—and is in talks for more. The one

in Liupanshui, Guizhou, into which

SafBon has pumped $235 million under

public-private partnership, or PPP, will

be fully onstream by year-end. Already

last year, Sponge City work accounted

for half of SafBon’s overall revenue.

Cautious about the PPP model,

Zhang has kept it to 57% of SafBon’s

total contracts. “Many companies are

keen on PPP because of its big size.