Solutions in Water
Issue No. 45 - Feb/March 2009
Phoenix gets the message
Just back from a trade mission to Phoenix, Arizona, Water Industry Alliance chief, Joe Flynn hopes the high-profile contacts will bring a flood of US interest in cost-saving Australian water technology.
He says the mission, like the highly successful NZ mission late last year, was about connecting SA business and innovation to US partners.
“However the target audience and format is very different,” Joe says.
Joe joined State Ministers as a keynote speaker at the ‘Challenge of Water & Energy’ conference, attended by a Who’s Who of US water and energy companies and government, to share the world-leading example of SA’s response to climate change response and water scarcity.
The event was part of the Australia Week campaign, a massive promotion of Australia to the USA.
A concurrent Pitchfest event aimed to connect leading-edge SA researchers and startup technology companies with potential clients, suppliers, research partners and investors.
Research nexus body ICE WaRM starred at Pitchfest. The International Centre of Excellence in Water Resource Management, to use its formal name, is a hub for the world leading research emerging from the collaborative Centre for Water Management & Reuse at Uni SA. ICE WaRM’s Dr Paul Dalby presented on advances such as systems for managed aquifer recharge for improving water security in a drying climate.
“University of Adelaide’s photonics initiative is taking light that normally travels inside a fibre optic cable and directing it outside the fibre to enable cheap, in situ, real-time environmental sensors,” Joe says, “and Flinders University is innovating to reduce dramatically the energy used in desalting brackish water.”
Pitchfest offered a prime opportunity to impress a very difficult market and gain ground in what has to be a sustained marketing effort.
“The USA is an enormous and very fragmented market,” Joe points out. “While Australia has a pr...
