Featured Stories | Singapore Economic Development Board

Watershed Move for Siemens

German conglomerate Siemens is a world leader in products, services and solutions for water and used water treatment. In view of the rapidly growing Asian market for water treatment, Siemens established its Asian centre of competence for water technologies in Singapore in 2007. The centre is expected to incur research spending of S$50 million in the coming few years. It will also be employing more than 60 water research professionals. Singapore is also the Asia Pacific Headquarters for Siemens Water.

“Asia is after all the fastest growing market in water technologies, so rather than conduct business here through our offices half a world away, we thought it made better sense to set up shop here,” said Jagannath Rao, President for Siemens Water Asia. A further plus point for Siemens was Singapore’s willingness to work with water companies to develop new technologies, Mr. Rao said.

GE Water Creates Waves

GE Water & Process Technologies, a unit of the General Electric Company of the US, is a standard-bearer in water technology worldwide. When it wanted to step up its R&D efforts, it found the perfect fit in Singapore. In 2006, the company announced it would invest S$130 million (US$84.5million) over the next 10 years to establish a Global Water R&D Centre.

The Centre will comprise five Centres of Excellence at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and employ some 100 researchers. It will build up a full range of R&D capabilities to provide innovative solutions to such concerns as alleviating water issues related to quality, availability and the affordability of safe, usable water supplies.

"Our decision to invest in Singapore is due to the strong commitment from the government in developing the water industry. This, coupled with easy availability of skilled manpower and the strong enforcement of intellectual property rights regulations make Singapore the ideal platform to launch this R&D Centre," said Jeff Garwood, president and CEO, GE Water & Process Technologies during the announcement.

Keppel Ventures into Environmental Technologies

The environmental business is an integral part of homegrown multinational company, Keppel Corporation. In March 2007, Keppel Integrated Engineering (KIE), the environmental arm of the Corporation, inaugurated the Keppel Environmental Technology Centre (KETC). This R&D centre will employ 50 research personnel and focus research efforts on energy recovery from solid waste and wastewater treatment, recycling and minimisation of residual by-products from waste and wastewater treatment, and membrane applications for producing water from non-conventional sources.

Keppel has also opened one of Singapore’s largest NEWater plants at Ulu Pandan. The plant will produce about 10% of Singapore’s total water needs. In addition, the company will be building Singapore’s fifth waste-to-energy plant under a Public-Private Partnership initiative. The plant is expected to be in operation in early 2009 and will be able to treat 800 tonnes of solid waste a day to generate more than 20MW of green energy.

Keppel has ventured into countries such as China, India and the Middle East. In Qatar, Keppel was awarded approximately S$3.2 billion worth of contracts to develop the largest greenfield wastewater treatment and reuse facility, and the first integrated solid waste treatment facility in the Middle East. The integrated solid waste treatment facility is designed to treat up to 2,300 tonnes of mixed solid waste and 5,000 tonnes of construction and demolition waste per day. Keppel will operate and maintain the wastewater and solid waste treatment facilities for 10 and 20 years respectively.