Severn Trent: A world leader in water technology

Source: Manufacturing Digital

Date :23/07/2008 12:39:17

Formed a decade ago, Severn Trent Services continues to refine its disinfection, filtration, instrumentation and residential metering solutions.

Written by Kevin Doyle and Produced by Warren McDonald

In the 19 years since the privatization of water services in the United Kingdom by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Severn Trent Services has emerged as a leading provider of water and wastewater treatment solutions around the world.

Severn Trent Plc was one of 10 water utilities in Great Britain privatized in 1989. The company immediately sought to grow in non-regulated entities and looked first to the United States. Starting with the purchase of Capital Controls Company in 1990, Severn Trent Plc began a series of more than 50 acquisitions that would be consolidated as Severn Trent Services, part of the Severn Trent Plc group of companies. The company now offers a broad range of products and services concentrated around disinfection, instrumentation and filtration technologies, contract operating and management services and state-of-the-art residential metering products and services.

Tom Mills, Vice President of Marketing and Business Development, came aboard in 1999 charged with the task of unifying the acquisitions under the new brand of Severn Trent Services. Under the leadership of Leonard F. Graziano, who assumed the role of President and CEO of Severn Trent Services in 2002, Mills says the company narrowed its focus to “water, technology and services business,” adding that “all the non-focused acquisitions have been spun off.”

Mills holds a bachelor of science degree in accounting from the University of Delaware and a master’s degree in organizational dynamics from the University of Pennsylvania. He currently is serving a one-year term as chairman of the Water and Wastewater Equipment Manufacturers Association (WWEMA).

Severn Trent Services’ global headquarters are located in Ft. Washington, Pa., with local offices around the world. The company holds more than 400 operations and maintenance contracts in the US alone, along with a number of significant contracts throughout the world. Its largest contract overall is in the United Kingdom where the company operates 1,500 Ministry of Defence sites – a 25-year concession worth US$1.9 billion. The company employs 3,000 and generated approximately US$600 million in revenue in 2007.

“The plan is to double our revenue through a combination of organic growth, geographic expansion, new product development and targeted acquisitions,” says Mills. “We sell our products and services in more than 100 countries, and we’ve recently opened offices in the Middle East and China to extend our reach in those regions.”

Technology

Severn Trent Services’ water and wastewater disinfection, filtration, instrumentation and residential metering products feature several cutting edge technologies such as a widely used adsorption arsenic media, microwave ultraviolet disinfection and SmartMeter™ technology. The company’s contract operating services division offers a comprehensive range of operational and management services for water, wastewater and related systems to municipal, private sector, utility and industrial clients. In the United Kingdom, the company’s analytical services group is the leading environmental testing organization. Its international management services business provides support in all aspects of water and wastewater utility operational development and business transformation.

For water purification products – disinfection, filtration and instrumentation products – once a municipality or business has identified a need and developed a plan, Severn Trent Services works closely with the engineering firm to determine the most efficient, cost-effective, environmentally responsible technology for a particular application.

“It’s a regulatory-driven market, and municipalities are typically pursuing compliance when we come on board,” says Mills. “Then we work closely with the engineers, the contractors and the municipalities to provide them with what they need. While basic chlorine gas disinfection changed the world 100 years ago and remains a cost-effective treatment option, a number of new technologies have been developed as the market adapts to more stringent regulations and environmental awareness.

“The safety of communities since 9/11 also has impacted our industry. For example, since the terror attacks, concerns about the transportation and on-site storage of large quantities of chlorine gas forced companies to seek alternatives such as on-site generation of a chlorine equivalent. Severn Trent Services’ ClorTec® line is the market leader for this technology. “On-site generation is a technology that is growing rapidly. Another is the use of ultraviolet light to inactivate waterborne pathogens and viruses, including cryptosporidium and giardia, which are not easily removed by other means,” Mills says.

The use of membranes – especially for the desalination of brackish water sources – has grown dramatically. “The technology has been around for a while, but the price has been markedly reduced in recent years. Membranes have become far more efficient in terms of power consumption while increased competition has reduced the cost to acquire a system,” Mills notes.

Another aspect of regulation is the burden that compliance can place on a municipality. “Smaller communities are saying ‘We don’t have the manpower, or the brainpower, to get down to the very low and trace levels of contaminants’,” Mills says. “As a result, more communities are outsourcing the operations and maintenance of their facilities. They find this to be easier, more efficient and quite often, a less expensive alternative to self management. And, they maintain ownership and control over their assets.”

Driving factors

One of the basic questions confronting Severn Trent Services, as well as any other company in the industry, is this: When you have a huge and still rapidly growing world-wide population and a limited water supply, what is the most cost-effective manner in which to recycle wastewater or seawater into a usable water source?

These demographic shifts and the challenges of climate change and decaying infrastructure are some of the issues the company considers with its clients on a regular basis. “The way we conduct business and build our equipment has undergone radical change – increasingly so in recent years. Because of concerns about some historical treatment processes, especially over energy consumption and the ‘carbon footprint,’ we’re being challenged to be better in ways that weren’t relevant just a few years ago. This shift in thinking is creating opportunities to further differentiate our products and services,” Mills explains.

He says Severn Trent has had “nearly double-digit annual revenue growth over the past five years and ranks among America’s top 10 water technology and service providers. The company has also been successful in growing profits nearly three times as fast as revenue.

The company provides its employees with competitive benefits, training programs and funding to further their education. “People are our most important asset, and we’re committed to providing them the resources that will enable them to provide our customers with world-class products and services,” Mills says.