ON THE SPOT
Murray & Roberts builds a potentially profitable water treatment business to meet crisis
A turnaround at its underground mining business and reduced losses from the Middle East helped construction group Murray & Roberts double half-year headline earnings. While the company has set out to dominate work in segments of the resources sector like oil and gas, it’s also steadily building up a water-treatment business. Given SA’s drought crisis, that may be of growing importance in years ahead. Business Day asked CEO Henry Laas whether more companies will become water self-reliant. I think so, especially medical facilities like hospitals where they cannot risk not having water. What kind of options have you presented to private companies in Cape Town? We have small, containerised water treatment plants with a much smaller capacity — and they will do in the order of anything from half a megalitre to two megalitres per day. We did an exercise for Life Healthcare – they have about 50 hospitals and they placed two orders with us for hospitals in Cape Town — and we are putting thes...
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