Imagine you and your family had a peanut farm.
What would you do with the peanuts?
Peanuts can be roasted and eaten, used to make oil, butter or flour
or even used in industrial products like paint, oil, soap
or cellulose for paper. Would you sell the products raw?
At the local market? To an industrial manufacturer?
Would you invest in machinery to refine them yourselves?
One thing you probably do know, is if you wanted advice on how to
make this decision, would you seek out a sanitary engineer?
Probably not.
Following this module, you will find out how you could answer those
type of questions for the products from fecal sludge management.
At the end of the module, you'll be able to explain how to implement
market driven approach and understand how this kind of tool
fits into an integrated engineering design approach.
We want to know more about markets for products that could be made from
treated fecal sludge. Realizing that we're engineers, we consulted
experts in emerging markets, financial models and business
development to develop a method for the quantitative evaluation
of potential products resulting from the treatment of fecal sludge.
This method is called the market driven approach.
And the developed manual and calculation tool can be downloaded
from our website. The manual contains all supporting info
for the implementation of this method.
In the absence of clear legal frameworks for fecal sludge
treatment products, identifying the greatest market attractiveness
provides a method to help select products of treatment.
Once treatment products are identified, then treatment
performance goals can be defined for safe end use to ensure protection
of public and environmental health.
In addition to greatest potential to generate revenue, this can also
help ensure the design of adequate treatment, and promote sustainable
operation as plant managers have to meet customer demand.
In a market driven approach, market attractiveness takes into account
both the current market volume and a future for potential market growth.
Market volume is defined as the sum of the value of all available
products in a given market. For example, for animal feed that
would be the price and number of units sold in a defined geographical
area. Market growth is defined as the growth of the type of product
over a specified period. As this cannot yet be determined,
the historical growth of a product can be extrapolated to estimate
future growth.
A major difficulty with determining market attractiveness of fecal
sludge treatment products is that due to the general lack of fecal
sludge treatment products don't yet exist. And, hence, the markets for
them also do not exist. To deal with this, we use proxies, they can help
us to estimate market variables. To do this, we're no longer thinking
as engineers, and we're not thinking about what type of treatment
technologies we would use. First, we focus on the type of
resource recovery that can be achieved. Energy, food, material
nutrients, or water.
Then we think about what type of products could fill that resource
need. For example, solid fuels vs liquid fuels. Or soil conditioners
vs fertilizers. Then we think of the form that treatment products could
take to fill that need. For example, animal feed could be produced
by black soldier fly larvae, fish from aquaculture, or
plants from drying beds.
Maybe that all sounds a bit abstract. So, let's look at a real
life example from Kampala, Uganda to understand a bit more how this
method can be implemented.
The first step is to review the list of fecal sludge treatment
products.
From this list we want to decide what treatment products are actually
relevant for our city. In Kampala, all these products could potentially
be produced from treatment of fecal sludge.
The second step is defining the product application.
Ask yourself, where can these products be used?
In which industry? Or is it used on a household level?
Then list each application. For example, In Kampala, the product
solid fuel is used for cooking in households and is also used to
feed in the brick factories.
The third step is defining products that are currently used.
Because faecal sludge treatment products do not exist yet,
we cannot identify their market volume directly. So, for example,
as a solid fuel in Kampala, currently charcoal, firewood, coffee husks
are used. These are substitute products that could be replaced by
dried faecal sludge.
In the forth step we calculate the current market volume for each
substitute product. To do this, we review literature and conduct
interviews. So, to calculate the market volume, you could have
the average price per product times the number of product sold in a city.
Alternatively, you could have the average price per products
times the number of products sold by suppliers times the number
of suppliers in the city. In Kampala the market volume for charcoal was
found to be approximately 73 million.
You typically cannot calculate in exact number, but this method
can give you a reasonable estimation with the aim to be as accurate as
possible with further crosschecking.
The fifth step is assessing the market growth for each substitute
product. In some cases, there are trend forecasts available.
In others, it's estimated by extrapolation from previous years
together with interviews. At the time of our implementation the
estimated marked growth of charcoal in Kampala was 9 %.
In the final steps we compare the market volume and the market growth
for each product. By combining market volume and market growth
we can make a judgement as to which product has the highest
market potential or market attractiveness.
Each substitute product identified in step 3 is plotted here.
The higher the combined market growth and market volume,
the greater the market attractiveness is.
In Kampala, the market for solid fuel is very large and growing
rapidly compared to other treatment products.
So, you could conclude, that faecal sludge as a solid fuel has
the greatest market attractiveness. in this case, charcoal release stands
out. This indicates that charcoal as a treatment and product would be
a suitable choice.
So, now that you know how to evaluate market attractiveness
of faecal sludge treatment products, how can you use that information?
Just like your peanut farm, what is important to remember is that
this information cannot be used in isolation.
It needs to be incorporated into a comprehensive design approach
for selection of treatment technologies to help make
intelligent design decisions. With the number 1 goal always of
protecting public health.
The engineering design approach is not only about resource recovery.
So, you have to take this information from the financial perspective of a
resource recovery. As just one tool in a whole process.
Consider it with other factors. Such as local laws and regulations
availability of financial resources, human capacity, land area available
for treatment technologies and the faecal sludge quantities and
characteristics that will be coming into treatment facilities.
All of these are discussed in more detail in other modules.