Today, Air Water Ventures (previously known as Eshara Water) and the publicly listed SPAC Athena Technology Acquisition Corp. II announced a business combination agreement, resulting in a new company called The Air Water Company. This merger will establish the first publicly traded air-to-water technology pure-play when the combined company begins trading on the New York Stock Exchange, anticipated in the first quarter of 2024.
Air Water Venture’s technology uses an airflow system that extracts the water from the environment using its atmospheric water generators. According to Air Water’s CEO Alex Guy, the technology makes sense for places like the Middle East that have little access to groundwater or surface water.
Guy first encountered air-to-water technology while working in private equity in the Middle East. In 2018, he was introduced to a UK company with air-to-water technology that soon went bankrupt. Guy recognized the interest in this technology in the UAE and began exploring the creation of an air-to-water company.
“No one had heard about it,” Guy told The Spoon. “It almost sounds too good to be true. You look at an air-to-water unit, you look around the back to see where the hose pipe is plugged in, because no one quite believes it produces water just from extracting humidity in the air.”
After founding the company in 2019, the first project involved developing a 1,000-liter per day air-to-water generator in partnership with Raytheon. The founding team initially believed this technology would primarily benefit military and disaster relief efforts.
“The basic thesis of the project was it was an attempt to reduce the cost of transporting plastic bottled water for the frontline military personnel.”
However, Guy and his co-founders soon realized the potential for a consumer and commercial product portfolio.
“Hotels and schools were under pressure to remove plastic,” Guy said. “Big corporates in the UAE all made commitments to eradicate plastic bottles by 2022-2023. So we saw an opportunity there to try and help with that movement away from plastic.”
Today, the company’s technology is being deployed in the Middle East, where the company recently completed a water production facility at a hotel in Abu Dhabi named the Fairmont Bab Al Bahr. The Fairmont’s installation includes both an air-to-water generator that can produce up to 4 thousand liters of drinking water per day and a bottling plant.
Guy anticipates that the IPO via SPAC with Athena will provide the working capital to increase production of air-to-water generators and expand the product line. The company is developing residential and hotel room generators that can produce 2 or 5 liters per day. The 2-liter residential unit, which Air Water is looking to roll out in the US market in the next year, will retail for around $145. The 5-liter unit, which could go into hotel rooms in places like the Middle East or the American Southwest, would produce water in-room and replace “all of those plastic bottles that sit next to a Nespresso machine.”
The company plans to expand its commercial offerings, producing a range of products capable of generating 10, 20, 30 liters up to 50,000 liters. Guy envisions their solution as a comprehensive offering for larger commercial installations seeking to eliminate plastic, partly due to the company’s ability to create automated bottling plants.
Guy believes that while the initial attraction of their technology is to reduce plastic usage, the growing water crisis in areas like the US Southwest will become an additional driving force over time.
“The sustainability-driven consumer is going to focus on plastic consumption, but ultimately, I think that focus is going to shift to the source of water,” Guy said. “You know, where is the water actually coming from?”
Guy believes that their product will work well in locations with sufficient humidity to produce water from air, such as Florida or Arizona in the US. In contrast, states like Washington may not provide enough humidity during certain seasons like winter for the technology to function effectively. Internationally, countries like Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand, which have suitable environmental conditions and insufficient traditional water infrastructure, could benefit from their solution.
“I think air-to-water technology is a much cheaper solution (there), because you get rid of all of that traditional water infrastructure that you usually have to build.”
The Air Water Company isn’t the only company focused on building air-to-water generators. Arizona-based Source Water, originally called Zero Mass Water, is building air-to-water technology using solar panels that extract water from air. The company has raised $150 million from the likes of Bill Gates and Black Rock. Israel-based WaterGen, which has received funding from the Israel government, has deployed its technology into numerous countries which lack clean drinking water. And at this year’s CES, Kara Water showed off its 10L home and office unit that can produce alkaline-rich water from air.
According to the announcement, the newly formed company will have a pre-money equity value of $300 million and will have up to $60 million in financing to fund the growth of the company.
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