SINGAPORE: Sembcorp is aiming to ramp up its water treatment facilities globally by 50 per cent over the next five years.

It revealed this on Thursday at a tour of Singapore's largest Newater plant, which opens for commercial operations next month.

When the facility reaches full capacity next year, it will be able to supply 15 per cent of Singapore's current water needs.

This is the same amount that the country's four other Newater plants in Bedok, Kranji, Seletar and Ulu Pandan currently produce together.

Sembcorp's spanking new water treatment premises at Changi is the world's second largest.

It cost S$180 million to build and recycles waste water through a three-step cleaning process.

SembCorp now has a 25-year-deal with Singapore's national water agency PUB to provide the reclaimed water at 30 cents per cubic metre for the first year.

But the cost of the water, mainly for industrial use, will increase after that due to inflation and rise in wages.

Executive vice-president of Sembcorp Industries' Group Business and Strategic Development, Tan Cheng Guan, said: "There's a mechanism to pass some of those increases to PUB through a tariff escalation formula."

But SembCorp is looking beyond Singapore to the Middle East and China to pump up its water treatment facilities to at least six million cubic metres, from the current four million, in five years.

Overall revenues in this area will eventually form 15 per cent of its business.

It estimates that the waste water treatment business in China and the Asia Pacific region alone is worth about US$14 billion a year and growing. Of this, about seven to 10 per cent is in industrial waste water treatment.

Sembcorp estimates that margins in this segment are about 50 per cent more than municipal waste water production.

- CNA/yt