13. December 2019 | 05:50 CET
iWater Group, K+S, Nestle - the importance of water is increasing
Water is a staple food for humans and animals. The importance of water is constantly increasing with the growing population and the steadily rising demands for prosperity. Based on that trend, water becomes interesting for companies and investors from different perspectives. On the one hand, water extraction has become a business and on the other hand, environmentally friendly cleaning is becoming more and more relevant. The disposal of heavily polluted water has also become a challenge in today's more environmentally conscious world.
time to read: 1 minutes by Mario Hose
Environmentally friendly purification of water
The iWater Group Limited announced last week the start of sales of its products in Turkey. Turkey is one of the most important and dominant growing regions for fruit varieties in the world. Miguel Fernandez, CEO of iWater Group Limited, also knows that the export of agricultural products with ecological quality has gained in importance for Turkey: "About 25% of Turkey’s working population is active in agriculture and in this context, our products for an environmentally friendly purification of water will accompany many people at work in the future.".
The company develops, produces and sells products that have been used worldwide since 2018 in agriculture, food processing, livestock farming and oil & gas.
Waste water disposal in pit
As a potash and salt producer, K+S AG has to meet challenges with saline waste water. The company is urgently looking for alternative ways of disposing of saline waste water because, for environmental reasons, these may not be discharged indefinitely into the Werra River, according to a recent company release. In the past, there had been several production stoppages due to low water levels.
From 2022, the company intends to discharge highly concentrated salt solution into the abandoned Thuringian mine in Springen. "We want to make our production sites on the Werra future-proof," said Burkhard Lohr, Chairman of the Board of Executive Directors of K+S.
Water belongs to the public
The Swiss food company Nestle recently hit the headlines due to a court ruling in the USA. A municipality in Michigan had sued the company because it wanted to set up a pump to extract water. The water was then to be sold in bottles under the "Ice Mountain" label and this privatization process was also referred to as an "essential public service".
The Guardian quoted Osceola community attorney Jim Olson, who has been on trial against Nestle in the past, as saying: "What this lays bare is the extent to which private water marketers like Nestle, and others like them, go [in] their attempts to privatize sovereign public water, public water services, and the land and communities they impact. But this water belongs to the state and the public, because selling bottled water is a private business."
