Sanyo, ITB develop water purification pump

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB), in collaboration with Sanyo Electric Co. Ltd., has successfully developed a pump equipped with ozone-based water purification technology, which it has dubbed Aquaoasis and plans to start mass producing in April.

"This is a very important product for ITB because of the involvement of its researchers in the development process," ITB Rector Djoko Santoso said Wednesday in Jakarta.

He said he hoped the pump would help improve access to clean water around the country.

The government is currently striving to meet the United Nations Millennium Development Goal of providing access to clean water to 80 percent of the country's population by 2015.

Currently, only 34 percent of the 215 million people have access to clean water.

Sanyo, which invested US$1 million in the development of the Aquaoasis pump, will produce and sell it, while the ITB will evaluate and analyze its benefits in Indonesia.

"We will invest US$3 million more and plan to produce 20,000 pumps in the first year," said Sanyo executive director Akira Kan.

He said Sanyo would manufacture the pumps at its plant in Cikarang, West Java, and sell them for $700 each. However, he said he expected the price could be reduced after production increased.

He stressed that the pumps would contain 70 percent local and 30 percent imported content, with the ozonizer being imported from Japan.

After one year of production and sale in Indonesia, the pumps would be exported to other developing countries, such as India, Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines.

Industry Minister Fahmi Idris said the planned exports of Aquaoasis pumps would hopefully help increase Indonesia's foreign exchange earnings from electronics exports to $9.5 billion in 2009 from $6.6 billion in 2005.