Aquatech today announced a growth investment from Cerberus Capital Management, L.P. (“Cerberus”), a global leader in alternative investing.
The Cerberus partnership reinforces Aquatech’s leadership in water and critical minerals amid strong growth and a record backlog. Recent highlights include a 25-year operations contract for Stegra’s pioneering green steel facility in Sweden, oil field water management for Aramco, seawater desalination for one of Latin America’s largest copper mines, ultra-high purity water for semiconductor fabs, and process technology for the delivery of 40,000 tpa lithium carbonate at North America’s largest lithium facility.
The minority investment is led by Cerberus’ Supply Chain and Strategic Opportunities platform, which partners with companies addressing supply chain shortages, defined by critical long-term U.S. national security requirements, to help drive innovation, promote resilient infrastructure, and increase security for the United States and its allies.
Aquatech’s growth strategy focuses on geographic expansion in key markets, investment in key technologies to enable lithium production, membrane manufacturing, and expansion of its mobile fleet and digital services offering. Aquatech will also create a technology-as-a-service development company for water and process customers. These build on four decades of experience and a portfolio spanning lithium refining, desalination, water reuse, ZLD, ultrapure water, and PFAS destruction.
“Technology leadership and performance excellence are core to everything we do. This partnership positions us as the premier platform for process technology, and empowers us to accelerate what we’ve done for decades: solving our customers’ toughest problems,” said Venkee Sharma, Executive Chairman of Aquatech. “Our decision to partner with Cerberus rests on a shared recognition of the importance of water scarcity and critical minerals security, and a conviction that we can support industry with reliable solutions that deliver the lowest total cost of ownership.”
Michael Buchbinder, Managing Director at Cerberus, added, “With its technical expertise and decades of experience solving the most complex challenges in water process technology, Aquatech is well-positioned to advance its leadership in crucial, high-growth sectors. The company’s relentless focus on research and development enables it to innovate at pace and at scale, delivering integrated solutions tailored to its customers’ specific needs. We look forward to partnering with the Aquatech team as they continue raise the bar across the water and lithium markets.”
