Hidria uses a lot of water, also drinking water, for its industrial needs In order to minimise the use of this precious source of life, we have launched the international project LIFE HIDAQUA. Thus, we will significantly reduce our dependence on the water distribution system, improve our self-sufficiency and help resolve the water problem in Slovenian Istria.

The impacts of the climate change are no longer merely something that we see in the media and more and more frequently, companies are forced to face their specific consequences. One of the key problems is the shortage of water for use in industrial processes. Because of increasingly longer drought periods on the Slovenian Coast, where our corporation also operates, will have to face the issue of improving the efficiency of water consumption, not only drinking water but also industrial water, as the region remains an important industrial region.

Hidria decided to address the issue of water consumption for the needs of the business units Hidria Alutec and Hidria Mototec at the location of the Koper Technology Park with the European Project called LIFE HIDAQUA. The aim of the project is to resolve this issue in a comprehensive manner and together with our project partners we are searching for the solutions to solve the problems such as the shortage of drinking water, deteriorated ecological and chemical situation of natural bodies of water due to waste water pollution emissions and environmental nuisance due to the waste generated in water purification processes. In the past, we have already faced the consequences of the above-mentioned environmental problems at the Koper location. Thus, for example, we witnessed production downtime because of water shortage and deteriorated competitiveness due to a high water and carbon print of our products.

The main goal of the project is therefore the development of sustainable approach to water management in industry which will be applied in two pilot industrial cases:  the pilot industrial processes of pressure casting of aluminium and motorcycle frame welding. The concrete project goal is the establishment of a decentralised waste water management system with the construction of a prototype demonstration device. At the same time, Hidria's purpose with the LIFE HIDAQUA project at the Koper location is to promote the use of alternative water sources, such as brackish water and rainwater.

We wish to efficiently transfer this sustainable water management concept, which we will develop for internal use, into the broader local and regional environments through networking activities at the local and trans-European level. We have namely noticed that the water shortage issue has recently been in the centre of attention on the Slovenian Coast, not only among the official institutions but also in the general public. Therefore, we have included an active network of public and private interested stakeholders into the LIFE HIDAQUA project and we will address them and include them throughout the project duration.

Furthermore, the LIFE HIDAQUA project addresses a broader international topic of water consumption in industrial urban regions in the Mediterranean and it also has an international dimension thanks to the participation of the partners from Spain; additionally, we will also focus on cross-border raising of awareness in this area by including various partners from Friuli-Venezia Giulia and Croatian Istria.

The four-year project is worth EUR 2.5 million and is co-financed from the European environmental mechanism LIFE and the Ministry of the Environment and Spatial Planning of the Government of the Republic of Slovenia. In this project, Hidria has joined forces with three partners from Slovenia (in addition to the Construction Institute acting as coordinator, also the Jožef Stefan Institute and Geologija Idrija) and two partners from Spain (EURECAT Institute and the company Hidroquimia).