"Water supplies are a global concern and in South Africa, they have been developing towards a crisis that could come to rival electricity supply," says Mega Water Corporation founder and chief executive, Rudy Roberts.
"Our acquisition is a strategic lever to realise our ambition of becoming an indigenously owned industrial water company facilitating government service delivery by offering integrated, sustainable solutions from which all stakeholders can benefit. Sub-Saharan Africa has significant challenges which is fundamentally water."
This will parallel the achievements of independent power producers in electricity supply. Mega Water Corporation sees an ideal combination of business opportunity and social responsibility in water challenges nationally and in sub-Saharan Africa.
"Over the past year, Mega Water Corporation's operational division has completed a number of municipal and provincial projects," he says. "These include enabling access to groundwater and rehabilitating hospital water supply."
The WET group of businesses are leading providers of design, fabrication, installation and commissioning of the entire range of wet services building systems. As the first acquisition by Mega Water Corporation's investment division, they enable the company to offer an inclusive, delivery-based platform. They were originally acquired through wholly owned Mega Water Corporation subsidiary, Rucknet.
The deal was structured by Alchemy Corporate Management and financed by Standard Bank. Mega Water Corporation's strategic partner, Danish pump manufacturer Grundfos, brings global expertise, complementing existing teams at the WET companies.
"This new acquisition within our operational division will be known as Water Engineering and Pumping Technology as we are all keen to capitalise on the WET companies' success to date. WET's existing operations will continue as before, retaining the same staff and professional and highly experienced management teams."
"The WET businesses have healthy current order books with an attractive spread of local and cross-border projects," says managing director, Brian Ross. "Our expertise and experience will enable us to enlarge our scope to target public-funded projects. As well as broadening the current portfolio, this has the advantage of spreading business risk between the private and public sectors."
The acquisition positions Mega Water Corporation as the consummate water services business, adding significant value to Mega Water Corporation as well as to the industry as a whole, says Roberts.
"We are able to provide the best possible service offering to a broad spectrum of projects in the building wet services industry," he says. "Now is the ideal time for a 100% empowered industrial business with an entrepreneurial dynamic to move into water-related industries."
