St. Petersburg Water Works and Kemira sign long-term cooperation agreement

18 August 2006 - St. Petersburg Water Works and Kemira have signed an agreement extending to the year 2015 and having the objective of developing and producing new chemicals in St. Petersburg to be used in producing drinking water and cleaning waste water. This agreement supports the development programme and strategy for St. Petersburg Water Works as confirmed by the City Council of St. Petersburg. The objectives are to improve the quality of both drinking water and wastewater services and ensuring environmental safety.

Kemira has a production plant ZAO Kemira Eko in St. Petersburg, which produces 80,000 tonnes of liquid aluminium sulphate per year. This chemical is used in the purification of drinking water and St. Petersburg Water Works is the main consumer of the product. It is in connection with the new agreement that Kemira is investing in the refurbishing of ZAO Kemira Eko’s production line and expanding its operations to dealing with wastewater by building a new production line for iron based chemicals.

St. Petersburg Water Works’ objective is to reach the service level of the best West-European countries in regard to drinking water by the year 2010 – this involves several projects, among them the development work engaged in by St. Petersburg Water Works and Kemira. This development work has already resulted in the testing of hundreds of compounds to find the best solutions for the various processes and the new agreement guarantees the continuity of these efforts. St. Petersburg has about 5 million inhabitants and several water works producing drinking water. These plants process 2.7 million cubic metres of raw water per day (as compared to 0.2 million cubic metres processed by Helsinki Water Works).

A lot has been achieved in St. Petersburg in the wastewater section under the leadership of director Mr. Felix Karmazinov. The water works processes about 3 million cubic metres of wastewater per day and there is a strong commitment to achieve greater efficiency in the removal of harmful nutrients. The latest investment project is the Southwest Water Treatment Works, which went on-stream in September 2005. This plant is of the same capacity class as Helsinki’s Viikinmäki Water Treatment Works, and the know-how gained in Viikinmäki has been applied there as well. The Southwest Water Treatment Works planning and building involved numerous other partners as well. Wastewater is treated biologically, but the use of an iron chemical has been introduced in the last part of the process. The operation of the other wastewater treatment plants in St. Petersburg will also be developed and improved by applying chemical-biological processes.

“Chemical precipitation enables significant improvement of the efficiency of purification. The amount of phosphorus, which has an eutrophicating impact on the environment, will be considerably reduced from its present level. Trial precipitation results in St. Petersburg have been extremely promising,” says president Mats Jungar of Kemira Kemwater Business Area on the subject of assessing the smooth cooperation with St. Petersburg Water Works.

Kemira is the world’s leading supplier of inorganic precipitation chemicals. The company offers water treatment and sludge treatment solutions to municipal and private water treatment plants and to industry. Following the purchase of the American company Cytec, which is likely to be concluded by the end of this year, the turnover for Kemira’s water treatment chemicals business will rise to about EUR 650 million and the number of staff to just short of 2,000. Kemira has water treatment chemicals business in over 30 countries.

Contact Information

Mats Jungar

President

Kemira’s Kemwater Business Area

Contact via E-mail