http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-israeli-wastewater-treatment-co-emefcy-raises-236m-1001141831
Israeli wastewater treatment co Emefcy raises $23.6m
25/07/2016, 18:32
Shiri Habib-Valdhorn
The company raised the money on the Sydney Stock Exchange and hopes to build a purification plant in China.
Israeli wastewater treatment company
Emefcy has raised Australian $31.6 million (US$23.6 million) on the Sydney Stock Exchange after closing a placement of shares. The company raised the money from investors that included funds and institutional bodies from the US, Hong Kong, China, Australia and Singapore but not from Israel.
Emefcy was founded in 2008 by CEO Eytan Levy and CTO Ronen Shechter. The company has developed a high-quality, low energy consumption wastewater treatment technology, compared with other technologies on the market.
Levy said, 'We have set ourselves a target of becoming the world's leader in small and medium plants for wastewater purification, and the capital we have just raised will help us achieve that target."
Shares in the Caesarea based company have risen 250% since its IPO in Australia in December 2015 when it merged into a shell company. The company operates 44 projects in Israel, the US, Caribbean, Latin America, Ethiopia and China and it is China where Levy sees the company's biggest potential for expansion. China plans investing $15 billion in water treatment by 2020.
He said, "Over the past six months we've been very involved with China, learning about the opportunities from all sides and in our opinion, we've landed on an opportunity of a lifetime there. The Chinese government has presented a five year plan for building purification plants for 100,000 villages and it is an amazing fit for our product."
He added, "It took us time to understand how to do it - a joint venture or franchise but we preferred a different way by developing a fully owned factory and connecting with integrators that will link our core technology with the required plants. At first the Chinese rejected this because they usually prefer control or a joint venture but it worked out. We see that it's going to be something huge - a potential market of $15 billion so it's worth doing it in a serious way and not with limited resources and that was one of the triggers for the share offering."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on July 25, 2016
(20min delay)