Israeli Startup Aquarius Spectrum Receives Vote Of Confidence From Hutchison Water With An Investment Of $2.2M

Aquarius Spectrum, an Israeli startup, specializing in automatic monitoring and leak detection solutions in urban water networks, announced today that Hutchison Water International Holdings Pte. Limited, a member of CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd., has invested $2.2M (NIS 8.5m) in the Company. The new investment is a vote of confidence by Hutchison Water in Aquarius and in its advanced technology and products.

This is the round A investment from Hutchison Water in Aquarius-Spectrum, after the Company has graduated from the Hutchison-Kinrot Technology Incubator. This investment is further evidence of the solid support Hutchison Water gives to Hutchison-Kinrot portfolio of technology companies.

In November 2012, Hutchison Water acquired the Hutchison Kinrot Incubator that had been founded in 1993 as part of the Israeli technology incubator program. The Hutchison-Kinrot incubator operates under the program of the Israeli Office of the Chief Scientist, at the Ministry of Economy. Hutchison Kinrot supports and cultivates companies in the area of water and cleantech and has portfolio companies that develop advanced technologies in water, treatment, purification, smart network management and more.

Aquarius Spectrum was established in 2009 by the entrepreneur David Solomon. The Company developed an integrated system comprised of sensors and software that provides daily monitoring of the water pipe condition and alerts when leaks first start to develop. This ability to identify water leakage at a very early stage prevents water loss. It also allows smart and efficient maintenance and management of the water network and is part of the concept of IoT - Internet of Things.

To date, more than 2,000 of the company’s sensors are operating in 4 cities, including Jerusalem, monitoring over 1,000km (620 miles) of water pipes daily. The company’s head office is located in Netanya and employs 18 people.

On March 2015, Aquarius Spectrum has won 2nd place ("Runner-Up") in the “Imagine H2O” global competition for growth-stage water infrastructure innovation technologies. The company was included in a finalist group of six out of 100 companies which entered into the competition.

Zeev Efrat, Aquarius-Spectrum's CEO noted "We are delighted to win the vote of confidence from one of the leading multinationals and we see this as further proof of the innovations our company is bringing to the global market. One of the challenges facing water companies throughout the world and particularly in the US, is the high rate of water-loss resulting from aging infrastructure buried beneath the ground, combined with the lack of reliable and up-to-date information about the state of pipes at any given moment.”".

Dan Eldar, the Executive Director of Hutchison Water said that “the investment in Aquarius is another demonstration of the CKHH’s commitment to lead incubator companies from the concept stage to international sales and to open the doors for them to the markets in which we operate globally. Aquarius-Spectrum's groundbreaking technology will be an important component in the worldwide effort for smarter management of scarce water resources” ".

About Hutchison Water
Hutchison Water is a division established in 2008 and operating as part of the CKHH Group. Hutchison Water is developing and operating projects in key strategic areas in the water business and investing in ground breaking technologies in water and Cleantech.

About Aquarius-Spectrum
Aquarius Spectrum specializes in cloud computing solutions for the monitoring of municipal water distribution networks and the detection of underground leaks from the earliest stages of their development (1.5mm (1/16") holes). Leaks of this size generally cannot be identified by other technologies on the market.

Aquarius-Spectrum's solutions include two product lines based on acoustic sensors and unique software. The first, AQS-SYS, is a fixed solution for daily pipe monitoring and second, iQuarius, is a lightweight mobile system for leak surveying and pinpointing that connects to a smartphone.

The portable acoustic sensors operate via cellular communication and have a built-in GPS system. This gives millisecond-synchronization of readings across multiple sensors and this in turn allows leak detection by correlation between sensors for every sample taken. Synchronous correlation performed in this way ensures high reliability and accurate location of all leaks from 1.5mm upwards.

The AQS-SYS and the iQuarius systems are supported by a team of expert engineers who are in daily contact with the customer, providing analysis of findings obtained in the systems and recommendations for action.

Aquarius-Spectrum was established in 2009 as part of the Kinrot technology incubator and is currently a subsidiary of Hutchison Water, a division of CK Hutchison Holdings Limited. For more information, visit www.aquarius-spectrum.com.