Precious water in focus at international water conference

Participating were about 100 representatives of some of the world's leading water-supply and wastewater companies as well as institutions and individuals working with water and wastewater on a global level.

The conference aimed to strengthen the dialogues between key figures in this line of business, exchanging ideas and experiences which may stimulate the development of new initiatives to meet the big challenges these industries are facing.

One of these challenges is the fact that clean drinking water is becoming a scarce resource in large parts of the world and the costs of water supply and wastewater treatment are increasing. This, and the tendency of water supply and wastewater treatment getting centralised in large international companies, is the reason why great efforts are made to minimise costs.

Consequently "the cost of ownership" was an important topic at the conference. In relation to the cost of ownership the energy consumption of a pump has decisive importance as it makes up some 85% of the total costs of a pump including purchase, operation, maintenance and removal.

The conference was a follow-up of a similar conference held by Grundfos with great success in December 1999.