“Why Italy? Well, that actually happened a bit by coincidence,” says Arnoud Drevijn of the Dutch company Spatial Insight. “We’d long had the ambition to introduce the software we developed in the Netherlands to other countries. A few years ago, Italy crossed our path.”
It wasn’t entirely by chance, though, Drevijn explains. “Italy has had—and still has—a serious problem with leakage in its drinking water network. In other words, water loss. A few years ago, the country received substantial financial support from the EU to help reduce that leakage. In such a large country, with so many ageing pipelines, that’s a major challenge. Solving it requires monitoring and smart data analysis that can generate predictive insights useful for management and maintenance. That’s exactly what we do. We now have several Italian water utilities among our clients.”
Spatial Insight’s ambitions are serious—evident from the fact that the company has launched an Italian branch and appointed a dedicated business developer to focus on the local market. Participation in Watertech2Italy, part of the Dutch Partners for International Business (PIB) programme, is also a big help, says Drevijn. “There’s definitely a challenge in Italy when it comes to asset management, but people are open to new solutions and collaboration. The key is finding the right partners—and PIB helps with that. For us, trade missions that allow enough time for one-to-one contact are particularly valuable. In the past, that’s even led to Italian clients.”
And Ecomondo? “It’s a trade fair with a strong reputation where many Italian utilities are present,” Drevijn says. “We’re there for visibility, name recognition and building/strengthening relations. Around the fair there are, knowledge sessions and dinners where we can meet interesting people. And so we did.”
Foto: Arnoud Drevijn with his collegue Luz Sainz
This article is part of ‘Tapping into Italy: Dutch watertech making waves’, a series of short stories featuring several Dutch water technology companies in the Watertech2Italy cluster. Through the Partners for International Business (PIB) programme, and supported by Water Alliance and the Netherlands Consulate in Milan, these companies are working to establish a foothold in the Italian market.
