ARAD Group
from Israel to world leadership

Arad is the parent company of the global multinational ARAD Group, the Group to which WaterTech belongs. It was founded in 1941 in Israel, a country where the preservation of water resources has always been an absolute necessity, even before it was an obligation. Israel had to develop advanced water-saving technologies to combat the chronic water shortage, becoming the world’s leading Nation in this precious element’s managing.

With more than 60% of its land being desert areas with virtually no water, Israel is one of the most hydrogeologically disadvantaged nations in the world. The arid climate, with little rainfall, only worsens the situation.

If in Italy and in Europe “Water is a precious commodity” resonates more like a motto, a warning not to waste such a precious resource, it is a veritable diktat for the survival in Israel.

Also, Israel has made the resourcefulness of its inhabitants the winning tool in global challenges, proving capable of overcoming even the difficulties imposed by water scarcity. Despite the adverse territorial situation, it has succeeded in creating huge expanses of crops, standing as one of the largest exporters of agricultural commodities in the world worth more than $2 billion.

Moreover, Israel is now a water-rich country with good surpluses and is even able to supply it to neighboring nations.

How has a small country, with a population of just over 9 million and almost totally lacking in freshwater sources, managed to survive and thrive? How has such an underprivileged land managed to develop and reach such high economic levels, with a GDP per capita close to $54,000 in 2023, despite the shortage of such an important resource for life as water?

The solution to such a gigantic problem has been found in the emergence of a highly advanced water-saving chain: several thousand highly technological and innovative companies, including many start-ups, operating on the entire water distribution chain and all focused on finding new water sources and preserving this precious resource. This process of technological acceleration has been so intense and continuous that Israel is now unanimously considered the new Silicon Valley.

And the results of such innovative investments have manifested themselves in outstanding achievements. Israel was among the first countries in the world to build gigantic desalination plants to convert seawater into drinking water. These state-of-the-art plants, based on the chemical-physical principle of reverse osmosis, take salt water from the Mediterranean Sea, treat it, and return potable water that can be distributed to the grid. Currently, more than 55% of the drinking water consumed in the country comes from this source of supply.

But the use of these portentous installations is not the only alternative means adopted by Israel: to combat the severe water shortage it has also been necessary to resort to other sources of supply that are quite different from those generally employed in other nations. For example, another 20% or so of the drinking water consumed comes from capture from wells that can reach a depth of up to 500 meters below the ground surface.

Another important source of drinking water is Lake Tiberias, also known as the Sea of Galilee, the country’s most important reservoir, located in the Northeast, near the city of Tiberias of the same name, from which fresh water is drawn, then treated and distributed throughout the country.

These alternative sources of water supply have enabled Israel to be independent and self-sufficient in water, thus being able to develop a thriving agricultural sector and leading to the emergence of an impressive water management supply chain.

On the other hand, such an outstanding achievement carries with it a heavy counterbalance. Indeed, the desalination process is extremely complex and energy-intensive, as is the process of extracting water from deep wells. Even the resource from Lake Tiberias, although easier to access than the first two, requires considerable effort to distribute throughout the state.

This complexity translates into a huge cost of obtaining water. Thus, in Israel, every single drop has not only great value from an ethical point of view but also above all an economic one since it costs an enormity to “produce” water. Unlike most developed countries, where the preservation of the water resource has predominantly a moral value, in Israel, it also has a fundamental relevance from a “wallet” point of view, dictated by the need to minimize dissipation, which is extremely costly.

This, coupled with the already mentioned general shortage of water resources, is reflected in a maniacal focus of the entire system on avoiding waste and “reusing” as much water as possible. The entiresupply chain must be very effective and efficient to avoid even the slightest squandering of this resource. Deep and constant adjustment, upgrading, and improvement of the entire water distribution chain is essential to ensure that waste and leakage are minimized.

This explains why the average losses of Israeli aqueducts are just above 8% (compared to almost 50% in Italy), which makes the Israeli Integrated Water System one of the best performing in the world.

Numerous studies, especially from Germany, claim that it is impossible – and in any case uneconomic – to go below the physiological limit of 7% water loss. Some Israeli distributors have gone well below this incredible threshold: Mekorot, a major national water company in Israel and the country’s main agency for managing that commodity, can boast an annual water loss rate of less than 3%!

Israel is also an international standout in water reuse: 100% of the water resource consumed is routed to treatment plants, and nearly 90% of wastewater, after being treated and purified, is reused, mainly for agriculture and to irrigate parks and golf courses. Such a percentage allows the country to rank first in the world ranking of nations that recycle the most wastewater, well behind the runner-up in that ranking (Spain, which can boast a reused water rate of just over 20%).

The data irrefutably show that Israel is the world’s leader in water management, having proved itself capable of brilliantly overcoming an inherent shortage of the resource, even becoming a major exporter of it.

A success of such proportions has been possible thanks to an intense process of technological acceleration that has driven all companies operating in the water management supply chain toward a constant focus on innovation and excellence in the products and services they offer. Only by focusing on absolute quality is it possible to succeed in reaching targets as challenging as those with which Israel has been forced to contend.

Arad is one of the most actively involved parties in this impressive water-saving supply chain, being essentially the only supplier of water-measuring instruments in Israel. The company, which was founded more than 80 years ago in Dalia, a kibbutz located north of Tel Aviv, after a meteoric growth in all the world’s most important markets has become the parent company of a large multinational Group, which is now a well-established international player and operates in more than 50 countries.

ARAD Group strives daily to bring to the market the most advanced measurement technologies to preserve water and avoid even the smallest waste, offering reliable solutions with extremely high metrological capacity.

The ARAD Group has subsidiaries scattered in the most diverse corners of the globe and sells over 3 million meters each year, which are then installed on as many as 5 continents.

The Group’s main target markets are, in order of current size, the United States and Canada, Israel, and Europe. These are the most technologically advanced geographic areas in the world, where ARAD Group can assert its products and services, which are innovative compared to the market average.

It is no coincidence that – for several decades now and still unique in the market – the Group has established an in-house engineering company, independent of the various operating units scattered around the world, dedicated exclusively to technological developments: Arad Technologies.

This company, consisting of more than 100 engineers equipped with the most sophisticated laboratories and research means made available on the market, is responsible for developing the most advanced technologies that will then be poured into ARAD products. Of course, this means that a very large part of the turnover generated by ARAD Group (about 25 %of it!) is spent on R&D, but it is also through this working philosophy that ARAD has created and continues to maintain its leadership position.

No wonder, then, that the U.S. market was the first “foreign” market to recognize this deep technological know-how, something that has made ARAD Group a major player in the United States and Canada since the 1980s. In recent years, many other markets, and particularly the European market, have also been increasingly directed toward a “quality approach,” focusing on companies and technologies that would guarantee effective efficiencies in the management of water networks. It is in such a context that the steady growth in size, as well as the expansion into more and more countries, of the ARAD Group should be framed.

Such a deployment of knowledge, as well as the very large R&D investments, have enabled ARAD Group to reach truly remarkable levels of quality, such as the fact that back in 2009 Arad was the first company in the world to launch an ultrasonic static electronic large-caliber meter (OCTAVE).

To date, well over 1 million units of this ultrasonic meter have been sold worldwide (mainly in Israel, the United States, Canada, and Europe).

But Arad, thanks to close collaboration with the Group’s Italian subsidiary, WaterTech, has also launched small-gauge meters into a new era of metrology: the state-of-the-art technology of SONATA, the range of ultrasonic residential meters, represents the best the static meter market has to offer in terms of measurement accuracy, reliability, and transmission capacity.

Currently, Arad and all its subsidiaries around the world have a full range of ultrasonic meters – SONATA and OCTAVE – from DN15 to DN300 gauge.

In addition to outstanding metrology, these advanced meters provide incredible data communication capability through Fixed Network or Walk-by and Drive-by networks, such as NB-IoT, LoRaWAN, 169 MHz (compatible with gas networks) and 868 MHz, both wMBus and OMS.

ARAD Group is not just a meter manufacturer; operating across the entire smart metering supply chain, it is able to offer all services related to installation, data transport, and data processing (big data) to utilities that require it. For example, the company has three large data processing centers and DAQs, located in Israel, the Netherlands and the United States, which already manage several tens of millions of meters installed in the field.

Italy is one of the European members that has most quickly and firmly grasped the rapid process of network digitization that is sweeping the entire planet, with somewhat different timing and modalities. Italian water distributors have been quick to grasp the potential benefits inherent in the new smart metering technology.

In particular, it is commendable how many of the Peninsula’s Utilities have immediately strongly embraced the idea of focusing on Fixed Network communication modes for meter data reading, to be able to implement a widespread network remote management system. Through such a sophisticated infrastructure it is possible to achieve real improvements in the operational management of the waterworks, minimizing losses and providing even more satisfactory service to end users.

The decision by ARAD Group to operate strongly in the Italian market was dictated precisely by these considerations: Italy is a country that is looking ahead, aiming for a more sustainable future, a future in which a resource as precious as water is no longer wasted, but, on the contrary, is managed optimally.

This led, in 2018, to the purchase of one of the leading companies in the Italian smart metering market, one of the most innovative and technologically advanced companies on the entire European scene, already operating for years in gas smart metering and thus having significant know-how in the field of smart grids and big data management: WaterTech.

Through this acquisition, ARAD Group is now also active in Italy through its subsidiary WaterTech.

WaterTech offers smart metering systems, both water and gas, developed with the same philosophy and advanced technology as the Israeli parent company. Absolute quality in metering and accessory services are the indispensable elements for the best possible preservation of the water resource, today so essential for life on our planet.

WaterTech – ARAD Group, being the Italian branch of the almost sole supplier of measuring instruments in Israel, is the system integrator that brings modern Israeli technologies in the field of smart metering to Italy.

The experience gained by Israeli companies in water conservation and massive water loss reduction can be of great help to Italian Integrated Water System managers. Conversely, typical Italian innovativeness can be a crucial factor in developing ever-new products and finding more versatile solutions.

Creating a partnership between Italy and Israel, in which ideas, best-practices, know-how and human capital are exchanged, could lead to significant benefits for both these two countries, so committed to anticipating the future, and safeguarding such an invaluable asset.