Demand for water solutions spills over

Technology group Micromega, which provides water management services to the droughtstricken City of Cape Town, sees strong demand for those same products in Asia, South America, Africa and other regions, CEO Greg Morris says.

“We’ve got 40 proof of concepts running globally on our product — we’ve got interest from all over the place coming at us,” Morris said.

While Micromega would not be constrained by its production capabilities, Morris said it would need to find partners for distribution and support services if the company was to meet this demand.

Interest in its proprietary water management technology was coming from the Philippines, the Middle East, South America and Africa. These were regions “that are inherently suffering from population explosion, climate change and so on”.

“Where water supply doesn’t meet the demand, you’ve got to have a solution in place, and we’d like to think that we’ve got the solution.”

The City of Cape Town is Micromega’s biggest client for these products in SA.

Struggling under the weight of a multiyear drought, Cape Town “has highlighted the need for demand management and end-user management from a remote point”, Morris said.

About 1.2-million of the company’s water management devices, which moderate consumption to keep demand and supply balanced, were being used by consumers in SA.

Micromega, which sold certain businesses in 2017 so it could focus solely on proprietary technologies, said headline earnings from its remaining operations grew 28% in the year ended March. The group’s high exposure to local government work had largely shielded it from the downturn in the private sector information technology sector. “The order book is still filling up and going in the right direction,” Morris said.