Let’s say I put you on the spot right now and asked to tell me some of the world’s biggest industries, you would probably say tech, oil, banking and finance, just to name a few. You probably wouldn’t even think to say the water industry – and I wouldn’t blame you, as the sector doesn’t exactly attract headlines and make a lot of noise.
So it may come as a surprise that this sector has grown an incredible amount over the past 25 years. Now worth somewhere in the region of $350 billion, analysts are estimating that it’s going to nearly double over the next 10 years, potentially reaching £750 billion. These are, without a doubt, some very big numbers, so if I’ve managed to lure you in with them, settle in. Let’s dive into the water industry.
Major Subsectors
The water industry is made up of a variety of different subsectors that utilise water for completely different purposes.
Agriculture & Farming
This is the big one. All over the world, farms need water in order for their crops to grow. And that requires a hell of a lot of water. Farmers use water to feed their crops and livestock, and also use demineralized water to keep equipment as clean as possible.
Furthermore, as the climate changes and the planet becomes hotter, demand for water from farms that are located in those countries that are most affected is steadily on the rise, with no signs of stopping.
Beverages
If you’re in the business of manufacturing hundreds of billions of litres worth of consumer drinks per year, then you’ll need hundreds of billions of litres of water to do it. Big names like Coke and Pepsi spend billions of dollars a year just on water.
Water Technology
What about sourcing water? Or innovating with new filtration technologies and cutting-edge projects? Companies like Xylem push the envelope forward and create new, more efficient ways of getting clean water to the general population, to manufacturing plants, and to healthcare settings.
In manufacturing, water is vital to all sorts of different processes, most surprisingly perhaps in tech, where ultrapure water is vital to the production of semiconductors. When a chip is manufactured, it needs to be continuously cleaned to remove any tiny microscoping contaminants, and to do so, businesses need water that itself doesn’t contain any contaminants.
Water technology is also used everywhere in healthcare, where keeping a clean, sterile environment is paramount. Sterile water is needed for injections, as a solvent or diluent for medications, and for cleaning equipment.
Infrastructure Projects
The vast majority of the world’s water infrastructure is massively out of date, so a lot of countries out there are in a rush to update it as soon as possible.
As a result, lots of businesses, from small to medium sized companies to enormous global megacorporations, are putting their specialist skills in engineering and construction use, as they blueprint and build reliable new water infrastructure that people can actually rely on – especially in developing countries where this has traditionally been lacking.