Originally published by Germany Trade & Invest (GTAI), this interview features Carlos Oliveira, CEO of VentilAQUA, discussing how specialized knowledge, high-quality European engineering, and emerging challenges like PFAS removal are shifting the global industrial wastewater market.
Carlos Oliveira concludes a video call in English and smoothly transitions into fluent Spanish. VentilAQUA’s CEO also understands a bit of Arabic and speaks several other languages. This international background is an essential asset for the job: the Portuguese wastewater treatment specialist has installed systems in around 70 countries and generates over 80 percent of its revenue abroad. “And we operate strictly in the high-end sector,” the engineer clarifies. The primary competition comes from established industrialized countries, such as Germany, Italy, France, or the USA.
VentilAQUA’s clients are rarely municipal water utilities. Instead, their technology is predominantly designed for industrial plants, alongside hospitals, hotels, and premium residential complexes. In these sectors, VentilAQUA also encounters low-cost competitors from Asia, primarily from India. From Oliveira’s perspective, Chinese operators act similarly to their Indian counterparts: matching approaches, similar promises, and comparable technical weaknesses. Yet, large corporate clients—even in developing markets like Uganda or a recent cocoa processor in Côte d’Ivoire—remain highly critical.
“Clients Are Fed Up with Cheap Systems”
If Chinese providers intend to push into VentilAQUA’s specific markets, they face much greater skepticism than they did a few years ago, according to the CEO. Many industrial buyers have had poor experiences with “budget solutions” from India and are now looking at cheaper Chinese systems with a critical eye. Proven, functional technology, trust, and reliable references weigh far more heavily than simply the lowest bid. “Clients are fed up—they see that a lot is promised, but the plants often fail to operate properly,” says Oliveira.
He points to a real-world example involving a textile manufacturer in Peru. Three years ago, VentilAQUA lost that contract to an Indian competitor. However, the competitor’s system failed to meet requirements, showing technical defects, deviations from the original tender, and unreliable operation. “The competitor didn’t truly master the underlying technical principles,” Oliveira explains. As a result, clients are returning to European and US providers.
Industry Demands Highly Specific Solutions
Oliveira emphasizes that VentilAQUA places the highest value on the continuous development of its internal expertise. When treating highly specific industrial wastewater, merely understanding the basic chemical or process engineering principles is not enough. “You have to go into the smallest detail”—something Asian budget providers routinely skip. This creates a knowledge gap that will likely secure a competitive advantage for companies like VentilAQUA for decades to come. “Indian engineers are remarkably good, but quality cannot simply be copied. Specialized know-how is the deciding factor.”
Around 30 of VentilAQUA’s 35 employees are engineers. They design custom systems tailored to industries like food and beverage, textiles, or chemicals. Their most important manufacturing material is high-grade plastic, used for both the structural frames of the systems, as well as pumps and other internal components.
“It’s top-shelf quality and comes from Germany,” Oliveira says. The material is lighter than stainless steel, lasts longer, does not corrode, offers equal structural stability, and requires no painting. VentilAQUA builds the frames in-house and assembles the components, which are also mostly sourced from Germany or other European nations. Experiences with Asian components have been disappointing: the plastic used in pumps from China was inferior, and cables from India reached only a fraction of the required thickness. “They posed an acute fire hazard.”
Scaling Up and Tackling the PFAS Challenge
Looking ahead, VentilAQUA aims to practically quadruple its revenue to €20 million by 2030. Both new and existing investors, some based in Germany, have committed fresh capital to back this growth. Oliveira sees a highly dynamic market ahead, driven far beyond classic wastewater treatment. Increasingly, the focus is shifting toward advanced water reuse. “We can treat the water all the way back to drinking-water quality,” he states.
Additionally, a massive new market is emerging around the treatment of PFAS (“forever chemicals”). These compounds are used in everything from non-stick pans to rain jackets, ending up in wastewater where they never naturally break down. Initially, chemical and pharmaceutical companies will be the primary clients for this specialized treatment technology, followed by municipal suppliers in the future. Eliminating PFAS is technically complex, opening major market opportunities for high-end technology providers. For Oliveira, the value proposition is clear: “We don’t argue over price. Large industrial enterprises are fully prepared to pay for solutions that actually work.”