How Beijing Enterprises Water aims to boost capacity
Beijing Enterprises Water is boosting daily capacity by 3m tonnes, aided by green policies
Beijing Enterprises Water Group, the biggest publicly traded water-treatment systems developer in China, plans to increase capacity by almost a fifth, enough to serve a city the size of the capital.
The group was targeting an annual revenue increase of 40 to 50 per cent for its water fee-based business, the executive said. Beijing Enterprises' addition of 59 per cent more water capacity to the end of last year boosted its total daily capacity to 16.7 million tonnes, it said.
Most of its projects concentrated on Chinese coastal areas with strong economies such as Shandong and Guangdong provinces, although the company was seeking development elsewhere, Zhou said. It may secure a 550,000-tonne water-treatment plant soon in the Tongzhou district of Beijing, a former "weak link", Zhou said.
"Given favourable policies, we'll continue acquisitions," Zhou said. The targets should have an internal rate of return of at least 10 per cent, he said. When selecting new projects, the company considers the local economy and sewage-treatment fees as well as whether big water plants are near.
The company started cleaning Liangshui River in Beijing and Luohe River waters in Luoyang this year. Beijing Enterprises will spend three or four years to complete the 3.5 billion yuan (HK$4.4 billion) Liangshui project, Zhou said. It will complete 10 per cent of the spending in 2014 for the five billion yuan Luohe waterway clean-up works. The company was planning on three overseas projects this year to expand. Zhou said. Current investments are in Malaysia, Portugal and Indonesia.
The Hong Kong-based company was interested in Britain, France, Germany and Singapore, Zhou said.
This month it opened headquarters in Singapore for investments outside China, which are estimated at as much as S$2 billion (HK$12.4 billion).
