SLCE WATERMAKERS - INSIDE MARINE

SLCE WATERMAKERS

A SOLUTION TO WATER SCARCITY POWERED BY INSIDE MARINE

SLCE WATERMAKERS

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PROFILE

How can a family business survive against competitors several times its size? SLCE Watermakers, a designer and manufacturer of reverse osmosis (RO) equipment for over 30 years, offers us some hints. The French-based company was established in 1989 by two engineers: Patrick Riot, the current Managing Director, and Gilles Gury, President. Ever since its creation, the business has experienced steady growth and today has 46 staff, a turnover approaching €10 million, and has delivered more than 600 machines in 2021.

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few years prior to its official establishment in 1989, the seeds of reverse osmosis (RO) specialist SLCE Watermakers had already been sown. In 1984, Patrick Riot and Gilles Gury were working together on water treatment for another company which delved into RO development when it wanted to diversify its activities.

“A few years later, the new owner decided to focus back on the core business of this firm and decided to stop RO development,” said Mr Riot. “We agreed to leave the company with the RO prototype and one customer because we believed RO equipment to be a promising business.”

The pair’s instinct was right. Over 30 years later, Mr Riot and Mr Gury are heading a €10 million business which successfully continues to purify water through the reverse osmosis process.

“Compact and reliable equipment for the yachting market is where we started,” said Mr Riot. “Once the reliability of the equipment was proven, we quickly added the fishing market to our portfolio. Once again, the products proved to be reliable enough for very heavy duty use in harsh environments. Addressing the fishing market was also an opportunity to test our ability to provide efficient technical support and quick delivery of spares worldwide.”

Full of confidence, the company then decided to address the Navy sector. However, Mr Riot admitted this market proved to be more difficult to penetrate than initially expected.

“Indeed, the players tended to stick to the evaporator technology and above all to companies with a proven logistic support,” he said.

Navy breakthrough The breakthrough came when the French Navy, having some issues with the evaporators of a ship in operation, approached SLCE Watermakers for a solution. The company supplied a preseries equipment it had just qualified, and after a couple of weeks in operation, the Navy was convinced of the efficiency, flexibility and reliability of our RO solution, including the logistic support provided by SLCE Watermakers.

“From that day, the French Navy replaced most of its evaporators with RO systems and decided to integrate them into their new programs as well,” said Mr Riot. “This gave us higher visibility in the Naval world and an opportunity to export our solutions worldwide.

The Navies of Singapore, New Zealand, Morocco, Belgium, Argentina, Saudi Arabia and UAE, to name a few, have since been supplied by SLCE Watermakers.

“With this new market, we showed our ability to offer high-class logistic support and traceability with very complete documentation,” Mr Riot said.

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SLCE WATERMAKERS

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PROFILE

In the early 2000s, SLCE Watermakers launched a new range of equipment integrating an energy recovery solution which reduces power consumption by more than half compared to classic systems.

At that time, SLCE Watermakers was the only company offering such a solution for capacities between 100 and 500 cbm per day.

“To give an idea of the impact,” said Mr Riot, “The island of Ile de Sein in Brittany used to consume 25 litres of petrol to produce 1 cbm of freshwater with their evaporator. When the municipality switched to a classic RO system, they dropped petrol consumption to 2.5 litres per cbm of freshwater. Eventually, with the energy recovery solution we offered, they reached 1cbm of freshwater for 1 litre of petrol.”

With such impressive results, SLCE Watermakers began taking enquiries from the cruise ship sector for this range of products.

Starting with a medium size cruise ship, the company then had the opportunity to provide equipment on a larger cruise ship which was producing 1,250 cbm per day.

“Once again, we proved to be successful,” Mr Riot said with pride.

“At the end of our first project with Meyer Werft on their build of Saga’s newest boutique ocean cruise ships, Spirit of Adventure and Spirit of Discovery, we were delighted to receive incredibly positive feedback on the quality of our products.

“Above all, the shipyard congratulated us on the fact that, for the first time ever, they had accepted reverse osmosis plants after the first sea acceptance test. For us, it was as we’d planned it.”

Today, SLCE Watermakers’ range offers solutions with capacities between 1 and 1,500 cbm per day of fresh, industrial or nuclearquality water from sea, borehole or tap water.

Growing in stature Speaking about the transition from manufacturing a couple of yacht units to solutions for cruise ships, Mr Riot said the evolution did not happen overnight.

“In terms of organisation, we now have two philosophies cohabiting: one for standard products and one for special projects,” he explained.

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“Standard products are built on dedicated assembly lines organised according to the Lean Manufacturing method. It enables us to produce a couple of hundred machines compared to a couple of machines in the early days. These assembly lines are followed by a test bench where every single unit is fully tested before shipment.”

Special projects benefit from the company’s new 1,000 sqm building extension which was finalised in early-2022.

“With new 20-tonne and 10-tonne bridge cranes, a 450 sqm test bench and a 24,000 litre seawater tank, we are ready to handle more special projects than before and in better conditions for our team,” said Mr Riot.

He added: “It goes without saying that we would be nothing without our team. We are constantly doing our best to offer good and safe working conditions to our workforce. We also make sure they gain competencies and responsibilities with their experience. As a result, we have a very stable team; some of them have been with us for more than 25 years. The result is a high level of service to our partners.”

Always targeting quality According to Mr Riot, there are two philosophies that companies in SLCE Watermakers’ market could follow.

“The first one is to target a market price and the level of quality will be a consequence of that,” he said. “The second way is to target a level of quality and the price will be a consequence of it.”

He explained: “In the middle of the sea, crew can’t have spares delivered, or a technician coming on-board. Therefore, we believe quality is critical. That is why we stick to the second philosophy. The whole team then focuses on one target: making the level of quality required at a price as close as possible to the market price by looking for and eliminating any waste.

“Our design team will optimise the integration of the components, and our quality team will check the supplied components to avoid any issue after assembly. Eventually, if we cannot match the market price, we prefer not to take a project rather than have an unhappy customer. In the long-term, we have found this to be a winning strategy.

Exports currently account for 70% of the company’s turnover.

To achieve such global coverage, SLCE Watermakers has developed an international network of distributors. When partnering with these distributors, Mr Riot strongly believes that stability ultimately offers customers a better service.

“We have been working with many of our distributors for more than 15 years,” he said. “We work with Vanson in India, Aquanautic in Singapore, Oceanpower in China, and Sin Tung Hin (formerly known as SOPOM) in French Polynesia. The experience of our partners combined with complete training in our premises, means our network is built to offer high-class technical support.”

A changing of the guard Speaking of the company’s long-term plans, Mr Riot said one of the first steps will be the transition of the company to the second generation of ownership, which is earmarked for 2023.

“Next year, Benjamin Gury and Charles-Henri Gury will take charge of SLCE Watermakers. This is a long`-organised transition as Benjamin started with us almost 15 years ago in the design office.

After evolving as a Sales Engineer, he will become the next Managing Director; his brother being in charge of the supply chain.”

Outlining the plans in greater depth, Benjamin Gury added: “There will be no revolution as the company has steadily been evolving to match its economic and technical environment; we will remain attentive to the changes and keep being proactive.

We will maintain our focus on stability. In a fast-changing environment, stability is an everyday struggle. However, we believe it is a key

ingredient for long-term relationships with our workforce, suppliers, distributors and customers leading to cost efficient and high quality solutions. Remaining a family business will help in this regard.”

Increasing the sustainability of the company’s activity – from the design to the recycling of its system, without forgetting the fabrication and the operation of the equipment – will also be key topics for the years ahead.

“With a French partner, we offer equipment powered by the sun without the use of batteries which is the Achilles’ heel of solar power systems – they are expensive and have a rather low life span,” revealed Benjamin Gury. “The idea is to regulate the water production based on the solar power available instantly. For instance, when a cloud passes by, the unit slows down. The idea is to store freshwater instead of electricity. This solution has been implemented several times already.

“We also recently equipped a pilot-factory producing greenhydrogen. The equipment produces 20 cbm of pure water every day. This water is then electrolysed to release the hydrogen.

Before this project, we equipped the Energy Observer, a research vessel which uses a fuel cell requiring hydrogen directly produced on board. We are one of the first bricks of the emerging green-hydrogen industry!”

Benjamin Gury concluded: “These are examples of what can be done regarding sustainability when several companies combine their expertise. Four other projects related to sustainability are currently on our agenda for the coming years and I hope we will be able to present the results of two of them at SMM 2024.” n

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