Providing water where it’s needed
While the state’s controversial desalination plants sits idle, an Adelaide-based firm is employing the same technology to supply clean water to a wide range of mining, commercial and domestic consumers.
Rowater Australia builds customised desalination plants for mine sites throughout Australia and employs the same reverse osmosis technology, plus other purification techniques, to supply various grades of clean water to clients from its premises in Forestville.
Operations manager David Entwistle says that while people often only associate ‘desalination’ with removing salt from seawater, the process of forcing water through membranes to remove all forms of salt and other impurities can equally be applied to rain, bore, river and dam water.
“Reverse osmosis removes impurities from the water and only allows the water molecules to pass through a membrane and, depending on the type of equipment used, determines how pure you can get that water,” Entwistle told Business Insight.
“In the mining sector, companies will drill a bore to locate water and we will supply containerised filtration and reverse osmosis equipment to produce the water needed on site for staff to shower, drink and cook.
“At the higher end of the purity scale, we have a lot of customers, for example in the pharmaceutical industry, that are operating laboratories and need water of the highest purity possible.
”We also produce high purity water that we sell in bulk to commercial businesses that don’t want to invest in the equipment to produce the water themselves. We have tankers that deliver to onsite storage facilities in the food manufacturing sector, for example.”
Rowater’s third division is service and maintenance with technicians maintaining the filtration systems and reverse osmosis equipment manufactured by Rowater. The company employs 14 people.
Entwistle arrived at Rowater three years ago after an interesting career path that included 15 years in the medical device manufacturing industry and earlier stints running a carpet cleaning business and working as a cabinet maker, and completion of a second trade in mechanical engineering.
With a succession planning process in place with his current employer, Entwistle recently completed the Threesixty Business Coaching course run by Business SA to further his professional development.
“The business coaching course really offered me an opportunity to participate in an open forum with a like-minded group and discuss different issues of business – from human resources to cash flow and marketing,” Entwistle said.
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“We really covered all aspects of running a business from start-up to success, and all the challenges and problems that you will obviously find as you go through that process. My coach was so knowledgeable. He had a vast business background that he was able to draw on and he was able to give us a lot of scenarios that he had experienced in his business career and showed how you can succeed.
“The ability to network with the group on a monthly basis gave me an opportunity to stand apart from work and ask the really hard questions that you can’t do when you are caught in the daily grind of the business.”
Further information: www.threesixty-sa.com
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