VA Tech Wabag Ltd is a multinational player in the water treatment industry. The company offers complete life cycle solutions including conceptualization, design, engineering, procurement, supply, ins
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tallation, construction and O&M services. They provide a range of EPC and O&M solutions for sewage treatment, processed and drinking water treatment, effluents treatment, sludge treatment, desalination and reuse for institutional clients like municipal corporations and companies in the infrastructure sector such as power, steel and oil and gas companies.
The company is having their market presence in India, the Middle East, North Africa, Central and Eastern Europe, China and South East Asia through their principal offices in India, Austria, the Czech Republic, China, Switzerland, Algeria, Romania, Tunisia, UAE, Libya and Macao. They divide their business into four strategic business units namely Municipal Business Group, Industrial Water Business Group, Operations Business Group and International Business Group.
WABAG, over the years has expanded its global reach through Overseas Direct Investments (ODI), either through subsidiaries, joint venture or associate companies. The company has 18 subsidiaries, 3 associates and a joint venture entity as on March 31, 2018. The company is having their R & D centres located in Chennai, India and at Vienna and Winterthur in Austria and Switzerland respectively.
VA Tech Wabag Ltd was incorporated on February 17, 1995 as Balcke Durr Cooling Towers Ltd. The company was awarded the certificate of commencement of business on March 8, 1995. Initially, the company involved in the business of design and construction of cooling towers and was a subsidiary of Balcke-Durr Aktiengesellschaft, a German company which was held by Deutsche Babcock.
In the year 1996, the company started a water treatment division and pursuant to this, they changed their name from Balcke Durr Cooling Towers Ltd to Balcke Durr and Wabag Technologies Ltd. In April 1997, the company undertook first EPC order from Reliance Petroleum.
In April 1999, the Austrian group VA Tech acquired the water business of Deutsche Babcock operating under the Wabag brand name. In India, the water and non water divisions of the company were de-merged and the non-water division was transferred to BDT Ltd. Consequently, the name of the company was changed to VA Tech Wabag Ltd. Pursuant to the de-merger and change of name, the company's primary business was changed to design, supply, construction and erection of water, wastewater treatment plants and operation and maintenance of the same.
In March 2000, the company entered into municipal segment by received their fist municipal order from Chennai Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board. In September 2000, they received the ISO 9001:2000 Certification from Lloyd's Register Quality Assurance.
In July 2002, the company started their O&M activity and they received their first O&M order from Chennai Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board. In September 2002, they received an order worth Rs 7000 lakh from Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board.
In September 2005, I-Ven Water Treatment Technologies Ltd acquired a majority stake in the company. In April 2006, as per the scheme of merger, I-Ven Water Treatment Technologies Ltd was amalgamated with the company.
In August 2006, the majority shareholding of the company was acquired by Rajiv Mittal, Amit Sengupta, Shiv Narayan Saraf and S Varadarajan together with ICICI Venture Funds Management Company Ltd. In September 2006, the company received an order worth approximately Rs 18,638 lakh from Kerala Water Authority.
In April 2007, the company created the four SBUs, namely municipal, industrial, international and operations business group. In August 2007, they incorporated Wabag Singapore. In September 2007, the company received their first overseas O&M order from Qatar. In October 2007, they completed the construction of a plant water systems package for Durgapur Projects Ltd.
In November 6, 2007, the company through their wholly owned subsidiary Wabag Singapore acquired the entire shareholding of Wabag Austria. Pursuant to this acquisition, Wabag Austria and their subsidiaries became the subsidiary companies. In December 6, 2007, the company in association with Badriya Hassan Makki incorporated a joint venture company now called VA Tech Wabag (Gulf) Contracting LLC, in which the company holds a 49% shareholding.
In February 2008, the company incorporated Wabag Water Services s.r.l, in Romania. In March 2008, they received their first overseas EPC order from Oman. In May 2008, they started International Engineering Centre in Pune. Also, they opened a branch office in Oman. In June 2008, they received order worth Rs 19,071 lakh from Delhi Jal Board.
In May 2009, the company incorporated VA Tech Wabag (Hong Kong) Ltd. Also, they received ISO-9001:2008 Certification from Bureau Veritas. In December 2009, they received order worth Rs 103,368 lakh order for seawater desalination plant from Chennai Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board.
In December 21, 2009, the company through their subsidiary, VA Tech Wabag (Hong Kong) Ltd, incorporated a subsidiary called Beijing VA Tech Wabag Water Treatment Technology Co Ltd, in which VA Tech Wabag (Hong Kong) Ltd has a 100% shareholding.
The company completed the Perungudi plant on a DBO basis where they constructed a plant with a capacity of 54 MLD and have an O&M contract for a period of 10 years. They also completed execution of a 455 MLD water treatment plant at Panjrapur for the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation.
The company was awarded the contract for a seawater reverse osmosis desalination plant with a capacity of 1,00,000 m3/d in Chennai including an O&M contract for seven years.
During FY 2013-14, the Company received orders for its Industrial Water Group (IWG) from international petrochemical and fertilizer industry. It executed projects involving complex processes like boron removal, a first-of-its-kind treatment in India. The Swiss office of WABAG implemented about 36 projects in CADISON; the International Engineering Centre (Pune) and the MBG in Chennai have successfully completed the pilot project. In order to bring uniformity in the software usage the Company adopted the CADISON platform for engineering during the financial year. WABAG has further developed the direct application of Powdered Activated Carbon (PAC) onto ultra-filtration membranes and the partial PAC recovery.
During FY 2014-15, WABAG entered into a technology tie up with Royal Haskoning DHV for the introduction of state-of-the-art Nereda Technology in India, apart from Switzerland to meet the growing market expectations.
During year 2015-16, Malaysia's National Oil and Gas company, Petroliam Nasional Berhad (PETRONAS) signed a contract with VA Tech Wabag Limited and Muhibbah Engineering (M) Bhd for the ReFEED and Engineering, Procurement, Construction and Commissioning of the Effluent Treatment Plant (ETP).
During the FY 2016-17, WABAG undertook promotion of projects with better technologies for reducing plant life-cycle costs. It further successfully completed Reliance Industries' Hazira Effluent Treatment Plant (first ever plant for treating petrochemical cocktail effluent) and JSPL's Angul Effluent Treatment Plant (first ever gasification effluent plant having 80% recovery).
The LATAM cluster of the Company focuses on the countries of Ecuador, Brazil, Chile, Peru, Uruguay, Mexico, Colombia and Argentina. The major focus in FY 2016-17 was to bring Centralization of infrastructure services and Global ERP upgrade.
During FY 2017-18, the company further continued to extend engineering support to its global offices in Austria and Romania.
With regard to Information Technology initiatives, the company primarily focused on adopting various digital initiatives and undertaking technology restructure of the Global ERP upgrade. Digitization and analytics have created lot of interest across WABAG global offices.
During the year 2018, the Company incorporated a subsidiary viz., M/s VA TECH WABAG BRAZIL SERVICOS DE AGUA E SANEAMENTO LTDA in the country of Brazil.
As of March 2018, the total funded financial investments of your Company through equity contribution in such ODIs amounted to Rs 25 Crore, which represents 6% of total financial commitment and the total non-funded financial investments in the form of guarantees through ODI route amounted to Rs 381.24 Crore which represents 93% of total financial commitment.
During the year 2018, the Company earned a dividend income of Rs 20 Crore from its overseas investment.
During the year, as part of business restructuring, expansion and other plans in Europe, LATAM and MEA clusters, some of the steps initiated by the Company were:1. It formed a Branch in Argentina and Dubai and a subsidiary entity in Brazil.2. As part of restructuring plan of European cluster, the shares held by German subsidiary in other group entities, have been restructured/transferred within other group entities. Pursuant to such action, the minority stake held by German subsidiary in Romanian subsidiary has been acquired by its holding company viz., VA Tech Wabag GmbH, Austria (Austria subsidiary). As at March 31, 2018, 99.97% shares of Romanian entity were held by Austria.3. Pursuant to the completion and commissioning of the Desalination Project by Company's Joint venture entity viz., International Water Treatment LLC (IWT), Muscat, Oman in the year 2016, the project is presently under Defect Liability Period (DLP). Upon completion of the DLP, the Company will initiate necessary action along with other JV partners for closure of the entity. During the year, there are no further payments made by the Company to IWT.
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