Beijingers will be able to drink pure water processed from seawater
next year. The Tianjin Haide Runzi Corp will produce the water at
one yuan (US$0.12) per 550ml bottle. This will be the first time in
China that desalinated seawater will be marketed as drinking water
on a large scale.
According to Du Chunyuan, general manager of Tianjin Haide Runzi,
desalinated seawater has sold very well in Tianjin, "We have been
selling water by the bucket to local families. A 20kg bucket costs
10 yuan (US$1.2) and we sell 1,600 to 1,700 buckets a day. We have
also sold bottled water in supermarkets in Tianjin at one yuan for
a 550ml bottle," said Du.
"At first the Tianjin consumers did not turn readily to this
product. They didn't think the desalinated water would taste
pleasant because the seawater it comes from doesn't. We responded
by setting up a promotion in the supermarkets inviting consumers to
taste the water for free. When they found the pure desalinated
water tasted not bad at all and was about the same price as the
water marketed by the bucket under the "Robust" and "Wa Ha Ha"
brand names, the volume of sales increased rapidly," said Du.
He
continued, "We plan to increase production, and develop new markets
in areas beyond Tianjin such as Beijing so people there can look
forward to having a drink of the water next year."
"The Tianjin Haide Runzi Corp. is affiliated to the Tianjin Dagang
Power Plant. The Corp. has invested US$5.4 million in importing two
desalination plants from Japan. Each has a capacity of 3,000 tons
of pure water a day. With production now scaled up, the cost of
desalinating a ton of seawater has decreased to eight yuan
(US$0.97). The cost of further processing the desalinated water
into the pure potable product adds two yuan (US$0.24) to this.
However, the cost of producing pure water from tap water is eight
yuan and our production costs are only two yuan more per ton. Once
these costs are assimilated into our total costs at the point of
sale this only makes a small difference to the unit price. And so
our product is competitive in price," he said.
Doctor Ruan Guoling from the State Oceanic Administration's Tianjin
Research Institute of Seawater Desalination and Utilisation said,
"There is excellent potential for the price of water from this
source to decrease as the technology improves. When daily
throughput reaches say 80,000 to 100,000 tons, the cost of
desalination should come down to about three yuan (US $0.36) per
ton."
China first adopted desalination technology to provide fresh water
for the local residents on some islands in 1997. At present, the
daily output of desalination in the country has reached 30,000 tons
with an annual output of 10 million tons.
"Improvements in technology can not only increase the volume, but
also decrease the costs of desalination. In the 1970s, the cost was
20 yuan (US$2.4) per ton but now, costs can be reduced to say 5 to
7 yuan (US$0.60 to 0.85). Costs continue to decrease gradually as
the technology improves with the application of new materials and
the costs of desalination plants are coming down. As a result
large-scale applications of desalination technology have now become
viable," said Ruan Guoling.
(china.org.cn by Zhang Tingting, August 8, 2002)