This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim Stenebek on Bloomberg Radio.
We wanted to change gears, Matt and talk about this issue when it comes to the growing scarcity of water and in relation to how it correlates when it comes to climate change and then also global warming. So I want to get straight to our next guest, Jasper Munkholm, chief operating officer of Air to Water Company. Thank you so much for joining us to start off, talk to us about your company and what you do.
Yeah, basically, as Haarah is actually a company that has been formed back in twenty eighteen in the Middle East. And basically what we're doing is is generating water, drinking water out of the air. So that's that's basically what we're doing.
Well, how I mean that sounds magical? What do you do to make that happens?
So it's almost medic I know. But basically I think I think most of you know, you know, des humidify us. You always know you know, the your your automobile, you know, generating you know, getting water on the ground when you have you know, left the kind of summer. Basically, what what what is going on is that that we take we take we take air in and then we filter the air actually and then it goes into a condensation process with which is normally the process you see in dehumidifiers.
And then of course if you look into dehumidifiers, that just dehumidifier takes out the water. But what we do is actually adding a few steps. So in those steps we had purification, mineralization, and then we add some UV lightning and then you can actually drink the water.
So the water is yeah, well, I mean when I think about it, especially in a place in the Middle East right where there isn't very humid air all the time, it sounds like an expensive process. You know, what do you use to fuel that transition? And how much you know, does a cup of purified drinking water out of the air cost?
Yeah, but actually since twenty eighteen, we have, of course, you know, made a tremendous effort in actually developing and innovating in the product. So now we actually basically able to compete directly, you know, head to head with bottle water, which is you know huge, you know, one point two million bottles of drinking water sold every minute globally, and it's not only in the Middle East, so you have humidities that are fluctuating. But we are also able to
actually do the same in the US. So it's not only in the Middle East, it's actually Southeast Asia, it's many of the states in the US, it's on the African continent. And the more we put into the development and innovation of our products, we can go down in humidity level and generate still water even though that we have low temperatures down to seventeen degrees which around sixty two farnhead.
So do you have I mean, is there a machine that's the size of a car or a briefcase? Is it a factory?
You know?
Is it diesel powered or solar like, I'm so fascinated by this.
Yeah, it is me too. I'm totally fascinated by it because the first time you see one is just like, oh, where's the water inlet? You know, there's no water inlet? Okay, where does the water come from? Then? You know, can
I drink it? And all that. So basically in our product range, you know, we have we have machines that can produce thousands of leaders today, which is big and huge and for industrial purpose or maybe even bottling plants that we are we are now going to you know, install at Hilton's and some of the big hotel resource in in the Middle East. But we are also launching next year, we are launching the very first one on
the you know kitchens. Count it up so imagine, you know, a high a f ryer, and that high A f fryer is sexually generating enough water for you and your wife for you know, per day out of the air. So basically our product range is everything from five litera up to thousands and one hundred thousands of litera. If you want to run, how we power it? Okay, you can plug it in, but you also have options to
sol up powered. So it's actually full circle on the water generation and that gives us a huge advantage that you know, we have waited quite a long time you know to get you know, really really into the marketing communication around this. We have focused on the products and actually building up a customer base.
And Air to Water is actually in the process of going public on the New York Stock Exchange via a merger. Talk to us more about that.
Yeah, we we're planning in the beginning of twenty four so next year, so we're doing a lot of preparations now, and of course, you know, transforming and I would say also begins to disrupt you know, a whole industry. You know, it's a three hundred billion industry, the water bottling industry, so it's a huge industry. And to do that, we also need capital and do further investments because we want to be the drivers also in this old industry that's upcoming.
So you could see atmospheric waters as as as a place of disruption within the water area. I worked in the water industry, biggest pump manufacturer in the world and so on, and this whole water industry is really really classic. And we also need to rethink how we're generating water because ninety seven percent of the water comes out to oud the ocean and it's and in many cases we also you know, desalinate the water, which is a condescent
process and very high energy consumption process. So we need to think about where we also and and even you know in the groundwater. So we are draining our reservoirs all over the world, so where do we have water. We also have water in the air, so it's actually around us. We just need to put more money more capital and innovation into the products. And that's you know, our main purpose with the merger.
And aspect, So Jasper, is this then a game changer in your mind? I mean, can you produce water from air at such scale that you know, we can use it for farming for example.
It we basically can do that. The some of the challenges that we have, you know, as I mentioned before is of course you know the technology, but but right now we could basically set up you know, with an x amount of solar panel to containers and then we can actually begin to produce water. If the climate, humidity and temperature of course is there, then you can actually do that for agriculture also well companies. So it's continue so so so it's basically just a matter of you know,
the purpose. We we are mainly focusing on the drinking water part because it has you know, if you look at it, just give you an example emergent markets. So in the emergent markets and the demand for drinking water will will always exceed the speed and pace you can do about building the classical water infrastructure and building pipes and infrastructure for drinking and drinking water is very very expensive.
But if you can bypass that then you can actually also build infrastructure on a state label much much cheaper. And then that's that's the scale we are aiming for because we find this, you know, almost it's just like, you know, a purpose. We have to do this because this is such an disruptive way of thinking about water.
Who would you consider to be rivals in your space to your company?
It is, of course, you know, the bottles, you know, the bottle of water. You know, that's that's of course rivals, but you could also you know, you could also see rivals coming up that are you know, it's a dispenser water. And it's also in many countries we see you know, there's also filtrations under the sink and so on. So so we have of course competitors, so to speak. But but we are now right now smack in the middle of disruption of the drinking water industry in general, and when it.
Comes to these types of emerging technologies. We only have a little bit about a minute left here, but I mean, pushing it forward, what do you kind of envision for your company moving forward? Because we talked about obviously working to go public on the New York Stock Exchange.
Yeah, of course, you know you also briefly touched upon it. You know, it's it's far as it's scaling, because if we can if we can scale this, you know, both in the US, not only in the middlest East, but US the African continent and southeast days. If we can scale this at large, we can actually help quite a lot, not only on the whole water journey or the impact journey of water bottles, but also to support people with that technology in areas where scarcity is super super stressed
or the water is super super stressed. And also we are looking into collaborations with NGOs and so on. So the more technology and the more innovation we can build, the more we can actually help this problem which is only going to be bigger.
Well, thank you so much for joining us. That's Jessper Mounkholm, chief operating officer of Air to Water Company, talking to us about the growing scarcity of water, which is obviously a big key issue, right Matt, and especially when we're thinking about how that relates when we're talking about climate change as well as global warming