How do you choose an industrial water treatment company in South Africa?

A site assessment is the survey a supplier carries out before designing anything. It should leave you with a clear statement of what the supplier would do and what it would cost. At minimum it should cover:

• A survey of every water system on site — boilers, cooling circuits, RO trains, effluent.
• Water sampling and analysis, including the feedwater behind each system.
• For a cooling circuit: the system survey, the metallurgy, the current treatment regime and the failure history.
• For a boiler: the feedwater, the blowdown regime, and whether the softener, dealkaliser or RO plant suits the boiler behind it.
• A map of the risks to uptime, production yield and compliance — including your discharge limits or licence conditions.

Before the visit, gather what you already have:

• Water bills
• Discharge limits or water use licence conditions
• Laboratory results you already hold
• Maintenance records that show what the water is costing you

That becomes the baseline a result is measured against. Prosep's own four-stage method — assessment, design, implementation, then monitoring — is set out on how we work.

Because every programme is engineered for one plant, pricing should follow the engineering. Expect the programme to be scoped to your plant after the assessment, with costs itemised against that scope so you can see what you are paying for: the chemistry, the equipment, the site visits, the monitoring and the reporting.

The useful comparison is the programme's cost against what the water is already costing you. On a boiler, that means fuel wasted on scaled surfaces, water and heat lost to excessive blowdown, and the cost of an unplanned outage. On a reverse osmosis plant, it means capital, membranes, chemicals, power and reject water against the avoided municipal cost at realistic tariff escalation. A supplier should state that comparison before you commit — and tune the programme as your plant, loads and water change.

• Results from real plants, in the plant's own units. Milligrams of iron per litre, kilolitres of municipal top-up, months between cleans — numbers the client measures and has confirmed.
• Results that have lasted. Years of running, not a commissioning-day snapshot.
• A trial on your own plant. A jar test on your actual water, laboratory verification before a full-scale change, or a side-by-side trial — such as the 60-day softened-versus-RO comparison Prosep runs on boilers, signed off by your team.
• Sample service reports. What was measured, what was dosed, what changed and what needs attention — the record a plant manager, an SHEQ lead or an auditor can act on.
• The standards behind the programme, stated honestly. Ask whether a standard is one the programme is designed to work to — such as DWS discharge requirements, SANS 241 for potable water, the principles of SANS 893 for Legionella, or the OHS Act — or a certification the company holds, and ask for the records that demonstrate either.

Prosep's own write-ups are on the case studies page: a steel coating plant's effluent, a food producer's borehole reverse osmosis plant, and a plastics moulder's cooling circuit.

Each of these is a sign you are buying product rather than a result:

• A price before anyone has seen the plant or sampled the water.
• Chemicals sold by the drum, with no dosing equipment or monitoring behind them.
• Doses set by habit or rule of thumb rather than measured residuals.
• No written report after a visit — or a logbook nobody acts on.
• No stated targets, so there is nothing to hold the supplier to.
• One bundled number with no scope behind it.
• Proof that comes from a data sheet rather than from a plant.
• A standard described as a certification, with no evidence to back it.

The difference between the two is covered in more depth in our guide to a chemical supplier versus a water treatment programme.

Prosep has supplied treatment chemicals, equipment and on-site engineering to South African industry since 1998, from Boksburg, Gauteng, across more than 300 sites. Every programme starts with a site assessment, is priced transparently against its scope, and is run by engineers who sample, dose, monitor, report and come back. The programmes cover boiler water, cooling water, process water and effluent, with the treatment chemicals and dosing and monitoring equipment behind them. Prosep is a Level 2 B-BBEE contributor; more on the people and the record is on the about page.