Hatenboer-Water: Experts in Offshore Water Treatment Solutions

Tailor-made water

If you are a vessel, FPSO or offshore rig operator, among your foremost ongoing concerns is no doubt the health and wellbeing of your people on board. Among the myriad of things that are essential in maintaining this is the provision of safe drinking water, and to deliver that one will need a dedicated water treatment installation.

Headquartered in Rotterdam, Hatenboer-Water is one of the world’s leading experts in the design and installation of total water production and treatment solutions. Boasting a diverse client portfolio that expands across a number of industries, the company’s main sources of growth remain the offshore oil & gas, and maritime markets. Here, its offerings include water desalination systems, containerised solutions, water disinfection, water filtration, pressurisation, distribution, conditioning and monitoring services.

“Effectively, what we at Hatenboer-Water do is provide proven, reliable and durable water production and treatment solutions, as well as technical support, to virtually any installation that can be found across our oceans, whether it be an FPSO, rig or platform,” explains Chief Commercial Officer, Guy Heijnen. “On top of that, we also provide trusted spare parts, consumables and consultancy services, and it is this breadth of offering that makes us the partner of choice for our customers in different fields.”

New trends

As an ever-present within the oil & gas market over the last several decades, the company has naturally had to ride the – at times turbulent – waves of economic change that the industry has experienced in that time. Nevertheless, the level of service it prides itself on delivering has remained unchanged. What has evolved however is the company’s ability to take on what it defines as more ‘high-spec’ projects. “Typically, water treatment solutions are placed in non-hazardous zones within a rig or in the hull of a vessel, however in some cases there is no choice but to place them within a more hazardous area, so on the topside of an FPSO for instance,” Guy reveals. “In recent times, we have found ourselves taking on such projects more frequently, supplying solutions and the respective piping and electrical components to explosion hazardous areas, for example.”

Other trends guiding the company’s growth at present include an increased awareness of environmental concerns and a drive towards increased digitalisation. In the case of the former, more operators, owners and lease companies are trying to move away from the widespread use of bottled water for drinking. In the face of this, Hatenboer-Water has been pushing hard the quality of the water its systems produce, working to emphasis the difference that a good water treatment product on board can make, and this has begun to bear fruit.

Having been around for a number of years, it stands to reason that the company is well in tune with technological developments taking place in the water treatment industry all over the world. “One of the things we have seen an increased emphasis on is this idea of digital remote monitoring and the use of components such as smart sensors to record how water treatment equipment is running on a real-time basis,” Guy adds. “Operators and owners are in increasing need of up-to-the-minute data, and we continue to develop and offer new tools to make that possible. Take the detection of legionella for example. We are able to provide test kits that can quickly determine the presence of the bacteria and give a good sense of its concentration on board. This allows operators and owners to react fast and prevent its spread within their respective systems.”

Close to customers

In the last decade in particular, Hatenboer-Water has gained solid growth by expanding its operations globally. “In 2013,” Guy continues, “we officially opened our own office in Singapore – one of the main hubs for our customers – and one of the things we immediately learnt from this was just how much it pays to be close to said customers’ operations, and to actually have our own people on the ground. Since then, we have set ourselves the task of branching out into other key hubs, and in 2019 we opened an office in Dubai. In each location, we have seen our presence grow as requests for added services such as providing spare parts and consumables have increased. Away from here, we also have a number of stock points in smaller hubs, for example in Egypt and Shanghai which we opened in 2019, and we will be opening another office in Houston, Texas, in the near future.”

In order to maintain its pattern of growth, the company has set itself a strategy to emphasise to operators, owners and other potential customers that it is – and will remain – a single source provider of all of their water treatment needs, from purchase to installation and ongoing maintenance. “It is important that we provide all of our clients – regardless of size or in which industry they operate – with all of the necessary knowledge, expertise and services needed to provide their crew and employees with drinking-quality water. As long as we do this, then there is no reason why we cannot continue to facilitate the demand we envision coming from the new builds and new contract opportunities that we anticipate seeing around the world in the years to come,” Guy concludes.

Hatenboer-Water
Products: Water production and treatment solutions