Pipeline 2020+, page-25

Sorry, I am not a tax resident of Australia. Cannot advise you there.

As a non-trade visitor, you can only enter the exhibits area. You will need to be a registered trade visitor to be able to attend and listen to the technical presentations. If it's going to be like previous years, Oxy and Zeelung will be there. I usually enter the exhibit area, poke my head around, listen to the questions and discussions that the professionals ask the exhibitors. Of course, they get very technical and it's best to do some homework before you enter.

For instance, in 2018, I asked one of the competitors why they used hollow fibres (Zeelung, Oxy) vs spiral wound (FLC's) and his reply, spirally wounded tends to choke. I then went back to FLC's booth and ask the same question to FLC and I would get a defense. It goes on and on, back and forth throughout the day. Though they refrain from talking bad about one another's products, there is some rivalry, as well as some collaboration. The collaboration comes in the form of Black and Veatch. It really helps that all 3 collaborate to get B&V's buy in of MABR as a whole, because with B&V's endorsement, there would be the industry validation that public utilities want to see before they go to the next step of setting up demonstration plants.

I anticipate I will get very little access to the powers (eg IIan Wilf, Wong Jin Yong) that be at FLC this SIWW2020. Why? Like what happened at WEFTEC 2019, MABR is getting prominence. The exhibitors will get swamped by trade delegates. That leaves me little space to get one on one time with FLC's staff, unlike say in SIWW2016, I could pull up a chair and speak to Eytan and Ronen for 3 hours with the occasional interruption of a delegate passing by and asking for a brochure.

Of course there is a lot more to waste water treatment systems like smart metering systems that I am interested in, but that is another story for another exchange.