@hotcopinvestor,
There are plenty of competitors in China, and an increasing number of containerized options, with remote monitoring and operation. I would not discount them all so quickly.
MABR will usually be the most expensive option from an upfront CAPEX perspective.
Then over a number of years the lower OPEX allows it to come out in front in terms of overall costs.
The 15 year guarantee also helps with long equipment life compared to some other treatments that need replacing after 5-7 years.
The bit you underlined, with the leading emission indicators, is the most important part.
The stricter the standards (about 10 Chinese provinces have updated their effluent standards in the last year to be stricter) that are applied to effluent requirements, the easier it is for Fluence MABR to outshine its competitors when factoring in all other attributes.
However, there are some provinces that are behind with updating regulations and initial price (poorer provinces) is more a factor. Fluence finds it harder to compete on price alone, where almost any new sewage treatment will meet more lax effluent regulations.
It is also difficult sometimes, as you have thousands of engineers in China who have gone through university and work training, learning about and experiencing certain types of treatments such as: MBR / MBBR / A2O / constructed wetland / anaerobic biological / etc and many large SoE's have formed their environmental remediation policies around certain types. MABR is still a relatively new concept commercially, even Suez and Oxymem/DuPont (both retrofit municipal market) don't have Chinese demonstration plants yet and Suez has been trying since 2017. Fluence are basically having to go out on their own in the rural decentralized space and educate a whole country on the benefits of MABR in comparison to other forms of treatment, at the same time their already established competitors are also going for the same contracts. Like we heard about with the tender situation in Brazil for the RO plant, that was initially meant to be a Nirobox solution, but had to be changed to a CES as the clients were unsure about how to compare the newer Nirobox solution to competing CES bids, sometimes it is easier for customers to stick to the old way of doing things. If a province has been previously installing MBR or MBBR, and the provincial SoE has dedicated their resources to developing these solutions, it can be hard to get them and the province to shift to install something else like MABR, even if there are some obvious benefits.
The progress of Fluence, in educating the market and finding partners, relative to the size of the company and time in China has been pretty good to date (unfortunately Emefcy management initially set the market up with unrealistic expectations), and 2020 should see further developments on the larger partner side.
It is nice to have a partner like Zhejiang Tiandi make great comments about MABR tech after 2 years of testing it vigorously. It is a funny partnership currently as well, as they have not really been mentioned as a partner since the MOU to build the Outang Village mini-SUBRE plant in May 2017. The newer plants in Meirong Village, Tonglu and Baguio Village, Lin'an were not mentioned in an official ann, as I believe both are technically demonstration plants and are below that $3 million USD announcement threshold. With the latest great info that
@nequalsone has posted, something has to be brewing to make the partnership more of a formality and commit to larger quantities.
The 14th five year plan comes into effect in 2021, so this may have more stringent requirements for rural sewage treatment, which will help Fluence to succeed further.
(20min delay)