The long term quick fix

A set of RSS containerised reverse osmosis desalination plants is heading to its destination.

Rental provider RSS is branching out into water treatment. Brian Grigg, general manager at the newly created water division, explains the company’s growth strategy.

For companies geared towards growth, one thing quickly leads to the next. Rental Solutions & Services, RSS in short, started business in the region by renting out generators and temporary cooling installations, and soon saw the potential for providing rented desalination plants.

“Many of our power clients said they had a need for temporary water facilities,” says Brian Grigg, general manager at RSS Water, perhaps unsurprisingly: “The water business is very buoyant in the MENA region.”
 

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RSS is a subsidiary of International Tubular Services (ITS), a company with a background in supplying the petrochemical industry, and thus no stranger to the region.

ITS decided to expand its portfolio by creating RSS Water, a new division set up to rent out containerised membrane-based
desalination and wastewater treatment plants.

RSS Water became operational this month. “We have taken a building block approach, in as much as we can take one or a number of containers, and actually design the plants to tailor it to customer requirements,” explains Grigg. “This could be for anything from a thousand to 100,000 people.”

The installations can desalinate both seawater and brackish water. Prospective clients include developers needing to provide water to labour camps, oil and gas operators, who are attracted to temporary solutions due to the temporary nature of their projects, as well as communities and residential complexes not attached to the water distribution infrastructure.

Unlike construction sites and oil and gas projects, communities tend to be around for a while. And indeed, in terms of the length of the time a RSS plant might be put to use by a specific customer, the rental tag might be misleading.

Rental periods will range from six months to 10 years, according to Griggs, but the company also offers a built own operate and transfer (BOOT) scheme, allowing the customer to purchase the plants at the end of the rental period.

The advantage of this approach is that customers have smaller upfront costs. “The big opportunity for clients in a rental system is that they can spread their costs,” says Grigg. “You’re not paying for the capex up front, you’re paying for it over a number of years. In fact, at the end of the longer rentals, they will obtain the plant for basically nothing.”