KGAL Industries, the KGAL Group’s investment unit specialising in the industrial scaling and commercialisation of proven technologies, and fluvicon GmbH, a Graz-based pioneer of forward osmosis water treatment, today announced their strategic partnership. The aim is to provide industrial water treatment as a service throughout Europe. As part of the transaction, KGAL Industries has also acquired a strategic stake in fluvicon.
The partnership exemplifies KGAL Industries’ mission: to support companies with proven technological excellence in capital-intensive, strategically important industries and to provide them with the capital, structuring expertise and market access they need to scale from initial industrial deployment to global roll-out. Industrial water treatment is a relevant example of this. It is driven by stricter EU regulations and the increasing demand for circular water use.
A partner that leads game-changing technologies to industrial scale
KGAL has been investing in long-term real capital investments for institutional and private investors since 1968. Today, the investment and asset manager with around 400 employees manages an investment volume of more than 15 billion euros in the areas of real estate, sustainable infrastructure and aviation. KGAL Industries builds on this almost six decades of experience. By combining capital, structuring expertise and long-term focus, it supports proven technologies in achieving industrial scale.
For founders of capital-intensive technology companies, this combination is rare. Many technologies prove their technical viability, but face significant hurdles in the transition from initial industrial deployment to commercial scaling. In this phase, financing, structuring and strategic partnerships become decisive factors. KGAL Industries wants to close this gap instead of letting innovators tackle the challenges of capital markets and industrialization on their own.
Why fluvicon?
fluvicon was founded in 2013 as a spin-off of the University of Leoben and has been working for more than a decade to transform a fundamentally new approach to water treatment into functioning industrial plants. The patented processes are based on the principle of forward osmosis instead of conventional reverse osmosis. They recover clean water from heavily contaminated wastewater from industry and food and beverage production. The process is characterized by high robustness, minimal deposits and incrustations, as well as significantly lower energy consumption and lower costs than conventional processing processes.
This more than ten years of development work and the systems that have proven themselves in industrial use form the technological foundation for the scaling by KGAL Industries. The partnership transforms fluvicon’s proven capabilities into a reproducible and affordable platform.
First project of the platform
The first plant of the platform will be built for the Polish subsidiary of a global food company with a turnover in the billions. The basis is a water treatment contract with a term of twelve years. The plant converts wastewater from a fermentation process into two valuable products: clean water that meets EU discharge standards and a concentrated biological residue that flows directly back into the customer’s production process as a recovered raw material.
For the customer, the benefits are obvious: there are neither investment costs nor operational expenses. The company sources clean water, reclaimed resources and regulatory compliance as a service.
Roll-out strategy
The partnership is specifically structured as a scalable industrial platform. fluvicon provides the technology and operates the plants, while KGAL Industries contributes structuring expertise, capital and access to the KGAL Group’s institutional network. Each new plant follows a standardized development and financing model. This allows for efficient expansion in industries such as food and beverage, metal processing, surface treatment, textiles and agriculture.
The partners want to expand the platform to an investment volume of more than 100 million euros and establish industrial water treatment as an institutional infrastructure asset class in the long term. This is based on long-term contracts, demand for essential services and strong regulatory impetus as the EU makes sustainable water management increasingly mandatory.
Thomas Griessler, Founder and CEO, fluvicon, says: “After a decade of development work and with equipment that has proven itself in industrial use, this partnership fundamentally changes fluvicon’s offering. Our customers are no longer buying equipment. They obtain clean water, recovered resources and compliance with regulatory requirements – without their own investment costs. With KGAL Industries as our structuring and financing partner, we can now roll out a model that works at one location across Europe – at a time when sustainable water management is becoming increasingly indispensable due to EU regulation.”
Gaisar Gabdulatzianov, Investment Principal, KGAL Group, adds: “This is exactly why KGAL Industries was initiated: We provide technologies that have proven themselves in industrial use with the necessary structures and capital to scale them. Water is one of the crucial resource issues for European industry. Together with fluvicon, we have created a platform that transforms wastewater into clean water and valuable raw materials. Our goal is to achieve an investment volume of more than 100 million euros.”
