1) Sewage treatment space is large, there are development opportunities in increment and stock

    Sewage treatment rate still has room for improvement. According to the "13th Five-Year National Urban Wastewater Treatment and Recycling Facility Construction Plan", it is planned that by the end of 2020, urban sewage treatment facilities will be fully covered, and the urban sewage treatment rate will reach 95%. At present, although the urban sewage treatment rate in China has reached 90%, the continuous progress of the urbanization process has allowed the sewage treatment capacity to still have a relatively large space for incremental development.

Waste Water Discharge and Treatment in Various Provinces in China in 2015

Source: Public data

    There is an urgent need and a huge space for upgrading the bid. The pollutant discharge concentration of the sewage treatment plant in accordance with Level 1A of the Urban Wastewater Treatment Plant Emission Standard is inferior to Grade 5; in November 2015, the Ministry of Environmental Protection issued the Urban Pollutant Emission Standard for Wastewater Treatment Plant (for comments Manuscript) In addition to upgrading existing emission standards, new special emission limit standards have been added. The pollutant discharge requirements of this standard require approximately class 4 surface water. However, even if the sewage treatment plant according to the Level 1 A standard accounted for less than 40% of the total at the end of 2015. According to the “Water Ten” requirement, urban sewage treatment facilities in sensitive areas should fully meet Class A emission standards by the end of 2017. During the “Thirteenth Five-Year Plan” period, the scale of urban wastewater treatment facilities will be upgraded to a scale of 42.2 million cubic meters per day, of which 36.9397 million cubic meters per day will be established in the city and 5.81 million cubic meters per day in the county.

2006-2015 Wastewater Emissions and Growth Rates

Source: Public data

2006-2015 Sewage treatment capacity and growth rate

Source: Public data

    2) The space for reusing water resources is huge

    Reclaimed water plants are treated with appropriate regeneration to achieve reuse standards. According to the principle of subsidiary water supply, they can be used for ecological environment, industry, municipal miscellaneous use, and agricultural irrigation to achieve environmental, economic, and social benefits.

    China's current reclaimed water treatment rate is less than 20% of the sewage treatment rate, the utilization rate is less than 10%, and developed countries have reached 70%. In the “Water Ten Article”, the target of the utilization rate of reclaimed water is proposed. By 2020, the utilization rate of reclaimed water in the water-scarce city will reach more than 20%, and that in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region will reach more than 30%. In recent years, after the clear water sources have successively built a number of underground MBR reclaimed water plants, the construction of underground reclaimed water plants in central cities has become an important choice for some major cities in China, and has become a development trend for the construction of reclaimed water plants in many domestic cities.

    3) Water ecological governance is the future development trend

    According to statistics, among the 295 prefecture-level and above cities in the country, there are more than 70% of cities with black and odor bodies, and the combined proportion of Central and South China and East China, where the economy is advanced and where the water system is more abundant, accounts for 71.9%. In 2016, of the 1,617 national test sections in the seven major river basins and the Zhejing film rivers, the northwest rivers, and the southwest rivers, the Yellow River, Songhua River, Huaihe River, and Liaohe River Basins were mildly polluted, and the Haihe River Basin was heavily polluted.

Statistics on black and odor bodies in various provinces and cities (as of December 2016)

Source: Public data

The Water Quality of the Ten Major Basins in 2016

Source: Public data

2016 National Surface Water Survey of 1940 Sections

Sources of data: public information, intellectual inquiry

6124 groundwater quality monitoring points in 2016

Sources of data: public information, intellectual inquiry

    4) The governance needs of Baiyangdian Lake are clear, driving the management and upgrading of the water environment in the entire Jinjingyi area.

    As the largest freshwater lake in the North China Plain, Baiyangdian is the only poor Grade V water quality reservoir in Hebei Province. About 86% of the area is located in Anxin County, Xiong'an New District, and the demand for treatment is eager. According to the planning requirements of Xiong'an New District, Xiong'an New District will become the forerunner of some policies in the future, and in the “Ten Shi” section, it is proposed that by 2020, the proportion of water bodies that have lost use of functions in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region will decrease by about 15 percentage points. The Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region is a region where water resources are relatively scarce in the country. The bid for water treatment and the recycling of water will all be vigorously promoted, thus stimulating the management and upgrade of the water environment in the entire Jing-Jin-Ji area to radiate across the country.

    Second, membrane technology has become the mainstream of municipal sewage treatment technology

    At present, the country has begun to implement more stringent environmental protection policies and a severe water pollution environment. The increase in emission standards will benefit the film industry. Water treatment using membrane technology is superior to traditional treatment methods. At present, the use of MBR in municipal wastewater treatment in China is relatively common. In terms of cost, the gap between membrane treatment and traditional technology is 25%-50% in construction cost and only 20% in operating costs.

Membrane industry chain

Source: Public data

    The entire industry chain is an inevitable trend in the development of the membrane water treatment industry. In recent years, the average annual growth rate of the entire Chinese film industry has reached 25%-30%. During the “Thirteenth Five-Year Plan” period, the membrane water treatment industry will expect a compound growth rate of 10-15%. At present, there are hundreds of 10,000-ton MBR urban sewage treatment systems put into operation or under construction in China, and about 85% of the total number of small-scale enterprises with an annual production value of 5 million or so account for the total number of membrane enterprises. Enterprises with an annual output value of over 100 million yuan only account for 5% of the total number of companies, but they have concentrated about 90% of the industry's operating income. The entire industry chain is an inevitable trend in the development of the industry. It is always the technical core of the entire membrane process water treatment industry chain to master membrane element production and R&D, and it is the industry’s profit margin. At present, pure film manufacturing enterprises gradually extend downstream of the industrial chain, and many environmental protection leading enterprises have entered the industrial chain upstream through the acquisition of membrane manufacturing companies.

Film industry output value in the past few years