Venetian company expert in wastewater treatment plants provides economic and environmental benefits
A leading company in industrial water reclamation, exporting know-how and technology, capable of combining development with reduced operating costs. This is Europrogetti Srl, a Padua-based company that has been a reference in the sector since the 1980s. We talked about it with CEO Silvano Storti.
Europrogetti: how was it born and what is it about?
«Europrogetti was born more than 40 years ago, after the Merli Law, which regulates the discharge and use of wastewater, came into force. At that time in Italy, discharges were individual, meaning each company had to have a treatment plant and then discharge into rivers. There was no bibliography or experience on this; it was mostly civil discharges. We, on the other hand, deal with industrial discharges: we have worked in different sectors, textile, food, pharmaceutical, but also with tanneries and paper mills. In Italy we have about a hundred plants. Then we moved to Spain and Portugal, then to Mexico and South America, where the textile sector is central: industries that had contacts with European realities contacted us because we had developed a technical solution to the plant».
It can be said that you are pioneers in the field…
«The first plants were chemical-physical plants, which used chemicals to reduce pollution; basically, liquid pollution turned into solid. My idea was to use a process based on biological technology, where bacteria demolish pollution. The water discharged from a biological plant is “cleaner” and the costs are lower. This represented an advantage for industries. We were the first to develop this technology, through lots of tests and pilot plants. We developed technologies and features that made the plant more and more efficient and allowed us to meet the values of the Merli Law. We, then, went abroad to China, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and North Africa, big markets for textiles. We have exported our technology and experience to countries that have followed in our footsteps».
Given your presence in key countries, how do you see your future projects?
«For the past 20 years we have had a very strong demand. In India there was a large contaminated area and the water was no longer usable. A judge shut down 640 companies in one day imposing an obligation not to discharge. This led to the demand for ZLD (zero liquid discharge), which are industrial plants with no liquid discharges. This has been another big challenge. If you can only recover 50 percent of the water you have an economic loss. There was no solution to figure out how to integrate the treatment plant to make it zero discharge; today we have the largest number of such plants. In India we have a company with 250 employees and we take care of the plant management. It is a very complex plant, which has about 12-13 technologies in it, some developed by us. We had to ensure water quality, flow continuity, and containment of operating costs. So we asked customers to contract the management to us. For us it is a matter of study, development, thanks to the fact that we are “inside the problem,” in that it makes companies more incentivized».
For companies in the sector, it is important not only to contain operating costs but also to be sustainable and environmentally friendly. Achievements for Europrogetti, which, as Silvano Storti points out, has been awarded by several international organizations. This year the Veneto-based company received an award for an innovative plant in Karachi, Pakistan. It is the only vertical water purification plant in the world, built on 6 floors for a height of about 40 meters. Europrogetti was the first entity to implement this cutting-edge project, invented there where it did not exist.
