EOFI Water Health International

completed

WaterHealth International (WHI, www.waterhealth.com) was founded in 1996 to develop and market distributed (non-centralized) water purification/disinfection systems, based on an innovative Ultra Violet (UV) disinfector (proprietary/patented technology) to provide potable water to small communities, institutions and households, as well as for personal use in the developing world. As a result of its market development initiatives, WHI has already sold and placed more than 300 systems in pilot locations, with a market value of $1.2 MM, through its affiliate partners in several countries, including Mexico and the Philippines. In October of 2003 WHI formally entered the distributed water service provider market establishing a joint venture with one of its customers in the Philippines, Bendix Sales Corporation. They have established a joint venture, WaterHealth Philippines, which operates water store franchise under the brand names Aqua Sure and W. WHI is in the process of negotiating a sale of its community systems water disinfection units to the local municipality governments in the Volta Region of Ghana. WHI is initial discussions with partners in India and Mexico.In the summer of 2002, Tralance Addy’s venture management company, Plebys International LLC, led a buy-out and restructuring of WHI. Plebys International LLC subsequently brought WHI through bankruptcy, restructured the ownership from seventy small shareholders to a core group of nine and converted most of the outstanding debt into equity and reconstituted it with $2 MM dollars through a Preferred Series A Shares funding round. The role of IFC/EOF is to: - Identify proven technologies that address local environmental problems in the developing world; and, - Provide commercial credits and technical assistance to a company that has a capability to cost effectively deliver products and services to address the demand in the market for clean water. The demand for small scale distributed decentralized systems market is rapidly growing in the developing world, while very few business models have emerged to serve this demand. We believe WHI is well positioned to pursue this market based on a commercial model, which addresses an environmental problem that has a direct public health benefit in the developing world.