Global Water Treatment Market (by Application, Product and Services, Equipment Type, & Region): Insights and Forecast (2023-2028)

Market Insight

People now have access to clean drinking water, but the future supply of clean water for human consumption and industrial use poses significant challenges. To ensure adequate clean water supplies for ever-increasing populations, increased investment in water treatment services is likely, both to ensure that water quality meets ever-tightening standards and to support increased rates of reuse. Water treatment is the process of improving water quality and converting it into effluent that can be reused for specific end uses such as drinking, industrial water supply, irrigation, river flow maintenance, water recreation, and so on, or safely returned to nature with minimal environmental impact. The water treatment process is primarily concerned with the removal of contaminants and undesirable components, as well as the reduction of harmful concentrations.

Lack of fresh water resources, rapidly developing emerging economies, rising environmental concerns, increased corporate investment in advanced wastewater treatment technology, and a growing emphasis on water quality and public health are expected to drive overall market growth during the forecasted period. Along with these trends, there is increasing pressure on water-intensive industries to improve their efficiency and increase wastewater reuse. These factors contribute to the need for more effective pollutant removal from water and are likely to drive future investment in water treatment. The global water treatment market is expected to reach US$325.41 billion in 2023, progressing at a CAGR 7.20% over the projected period.<

Segments Covered

By Application: In terms of application, the report provides insights of the water treatment market into two segments: municipal and industrial. Municipal water treatment market holds maximum share of global water treatment market owing to increasing population growth, rapid urbanization, lack of freshwater resources, rising water demand in agricultural sector and increasing use of municipal water for amusement activities such as swimming pools and amusement parks. Also, municipal water companies are increasingly prioritizing actions to address water quality and scarcity issues. For example: Veolia committed to diagnose water resources and develop solutions to optimize water management by 2023.

By Product and Services: On the basis of product and services, the report splits the market into three segments: equipment, services and chemicals. Services water treatment market is both the largest and the fastest growing segment of global water treatment market owing to increasing manufacturing activities, rapid urbanization, increasing company focus on building technologically advanced water treatment facilities and growing need for maintenance of existing sewage treatment plants.

By Equipment Type: The report further offers the bifurcation of the water treatment equipment market into five categories: membrane separation, biological, sludge, disinfection and others. Membrane separation water treatment equipment market is the largest and fastest growing segment owing to rising adoption of membrane separation technology in dairy processing & beverages industry, increased population growth, rising environmental restrictions on untreated wastewater discharge by industries, accelerated depletion of ground & surface water resources and increasing implementation of the reverse osmosis (RO) pre-filtration process in various end user industries.

Geographic Coverage

According to this report, the global water treatment market is divided inot four regions namely North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and rest of the world. The countries covered in North America region are the US, Canada, and Mexico, while Europe includes UK, UK, Germany, France, Italy and rest of Europe. Moreover, China, Japan, India, South Korea and rest of Asia Pacific are included in the Asia Pacific region. Asia Pacific water treatment market in the largest & fastest growing region of global water treatment market owing to increasing urban population, rising demand for municipal wastewater treatment facilities, rapidly growing manufacturing sector, rapid industrialization and rising government regulations for wastewater treatment.

China water treatment market held the largest share in Asia Pacific water treatment market owing to rapid industrialization, low freshwater availability and increasing number of stringent wastewater regulations to combat the rising pollution levels. In Europe and North America, there is an established base of water processing infrastructure which was designed and installed in some cases many decades ago, which requires investment to meet modern water processing standards.

Top Impacting Factors

Growth Drivers

• Increasing Demand from End User Industries
• Water Scarcity
• Climate Change
• Stringent Wastewater Government Regulations

Challenges

• High Installation, Equipment and Operations Cost
• Lack of Infrastructure Facilities

Trends

• Integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI)
• Growing Demand of Internet of things (IoT) solutions
• Rapid Advancements in Water Treatment Technologies
• Increasing Adoption of Nanotechnology

Driver, Challenge and Trend Analysis

Driver: Water Scarcity

There has been increasing demand for water resources, not only for municipal and agricultural purposes but also for critical industrial processes, so with over 40% of global population residing in regions marked under critical water stress and only about 1% of the water available on earth being freshwater, there has been an increasing demand for water treatment solutions converting seawater to freshwater via desalination process. According to UNICEF, almost two thirds of the world’s population is experiencing severe water scarcity for at least one month each year and more than two billion people are living in countries where water supply is inadequate. So, rising concerns regarding ground water depletion, low availability of naturally available drinking water and increasing adoption of the concept of recycling & reusing water by companies will continue to boost the growth of global water treatment market.

Challenge: High Installation, Equipment and Operations Cost

Water treatment plants are associated with high installation, operational and annual cost as wastewater is systematically treated in many stages where each stage requires special skills and expertise of labor force in terms of extensive knowledge about chemical composition and content of effluent stream to be treated, so, complexities of operating makes it more labor intensive and increases the operational cost, making it difficult for companies to generate enough profit margins. Water treatment process is also highly capital intensive. For instance, The Development Bank of Latin America (CAF) estimated that over the period of 2010-2030, US$80 billion will be spend on sewerage infrastructure and  US$33 billion on wastewater treatment. So with increasing competition and reduced margins, the companies aren’t seeking such substantial investments needed to build water treatment plants, impeding the growth of global water treatment market.

Trend: Integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Artificial intelligence in water treatment processes is associated with higher automation, reduced operational cost, low occurrence of human error and optimizing use of chemicals with AI models successfully predicting the performance of different absorbents for the removal of pollutants from water. The most commonly used AI techniques in water treatment are Recurrent Neural Network (RNN), Convoluted Neural Network (CNN), Decision Tree (DT), Feed Forward Back Propagation Neural Network (FFBPNN), etc., where these techniques are mainly used for adsorptive removal of metals, dyes, organic compounds, nutrients, pharmaceuticals, drugs, pesticides, etc., reducing water contamination and scarcity of clean water. Therefore, increasing integration of AI in water treatment processes is expected to boost the growth of global water treatment market in the forecasted period.

The COVID-19 Analysis

COVID-19 brought in many changes in the world in terms of reduced productivity, loss of life, business closures, closing down of factories and organizations, and shift to an online mode of work. Lockdown policies, imposed by the government to prevent the spread of virus forced various end user industries to either shut down or run low on production capacity, resulting in lower production and manufacturing activities by various end user industries and since end user industries including oil & gas, power plant, mining, pulp & paper, etc., demand water treatment solutions to remove impurities and chemical contaminants from effluent before releasing it into the environment in order to comply to stringent wastewater government regulations and achieve sustainability goals, there was a sudden fall in the demand for water treatment solutions as result of reduced production activities, having negative impact on the global water treatment market during the period, 2019-2020.

Analysis of Key Players

The market for water treatment has been fragmented due to the presence of numerous international, regional and local players in the market. The main objective of key players operating in the market is to adopt technologies such as AI, advanced diagnostics and nanotechnology to build an effective water treatment process for treating all the impurities present in a water resource. The key players of the market are DuPont de Nemours, Inc., Pentair PLC, Xylem, Inc., 3M Company, BASF SE, Veolia Environnement SA, Ecolab Inc., Kemira Oyj, DOW Inc., Kurita Water Industries Ltd., Kingspan Group PLC (Kingspan Water & Energy), Hydro International UK Ltd., BioMicrobics, Inc., United Utilities Group PLC, and SNF.