Siemens buys US water treatment firm Cambridge
The industry automation division of Siemens has agreed to acquire Massachusetts-based Cambridge Water Technology, the company said on Thursday, seeking to strengthen its product portfolio with new technology offerings.
The acquisition of Cambridge is a building block to Siemens' strategy of pursuing leading-edge technologies with high customer value for municipal water and wastewater treatment as well as select industrial markets, the company said.
Siemens has a focus on providing high-quality water treatment in both developed and developing countries by using innovative and standardized solutions, it said.
The technologies developed and patented by Cambridge increase the rate of solids removal and enhance the capacity and contaminant removal performance of water and wastewater treatment systems.
Compared to conventional technologies, Cambridge’s proven market solutions require less than half of the footprint and increase the capacity of existing treatment systems by two to three times without adding any new tankage, Siemens officials said.
The technologies can also effectively manage high wet weather flows and enable enhanced nutrient removal at costs that are substantially less than other available alternatives.
Suitable for use in new installations as well as upgrades and retrofits for a variety of municipal and industrial applications, the Cambridge product line complements Siemens' offer for biological wastewater treatment and clarification as well as drinking water treatment, according to the company.
Cambridge is expected to be combined with Siemens' municipal wastewater business and will continue to operate out of Cambridge, Massachusetts. The company's senior managers, Charles Hamlin, Steve Woodard, and Andy Bishop, are also joining the Siemens business unit's management team.
Cambridge Water Technology has marketed its solutions under the BioMag and CoMag brands, primarily in the municipal wastewater market.
Additionally, the company has used its technologies in a number of industrial market applications, and is investigating drinking water treatment applications.
Its proprietary technologies are based upon a novel approach of using magnetite as a ballast to optimize the clarification process.
Cambridge is the first company to successfully apply this type of technology to biological wastewater processes.
Using the technologies can result in significant reduction in capital costs for capacity expansion and nutrient removal, as well as improvements in meeting turbidity requirements, officials said.
The planned acquisition will include global technology rights but not Cambridge Water Technology's current subsidiaries outside of the US.
Financial terms were not disclosed.
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