Established in 1999 by Philippe Bertin and Jean-Paul Domen, under the name 3rd Millennium Water (3MW), the company initially developed water purification solutions using low-temperature, low-pressure distillation entirely made of plastic. The aim was to desalinate seawater or distill well water in small modules powered by solar energy to provide drinking water to remote villages in hot and dry climates.
The technology aimed to be simple and functional: it aimed to replicate the natural water cycle. The company quickly adopted the image of a cloud to communicate its technology and explain its concept: evaporating brackish water into a stream of dry air to form a cloud, then triggering 'rain' by cooling the air with raw and cool water.
The company only launched the pre-industrial phase of the technology in the early 2010s, bringing in a new shareholder to finance its demonstration machines and manufacturing line: the EREN Group of Paris Mouratoglou, which became the majority shareholder in 2013. The EREN Group supported TMW in its development and international deployment strategy, bringing solid financial capacity, pioneering expertise in natural resource economics, and potential synergies with other innovative leaders in water and energy domains. Thanks to the association with an industrial group of such stature, TMW carried out its first industrial installations and ensured their initial years of operation.
10 years later, in 2023, TMW took a new turn: the company broke free from the EREN Group to become an agile and innovative SME again and repositioned itself in a rapidly evolving market: energy is expensive, water is becoming precious, and technological industries using rare materials are being relocated to Europe. It is urgent to address these new challenges in a transitioning world where the incineration of aqueous effluents is no longer acceptable. The MHD technology should be able to meet all these constraints by producing reusable purified water (distillate) and concentrated effluents (concentrate) from which valuable materials can be extracted and recycled. TMW was bought back by its executives (Guillaume Bourtourault and Thierry Satgé), financially supported by a regional investment fund (Go Capital) to develop comprehensive solutions for effluent treatment and the production of chemical, pharmaceutical, or food specialties. Banking on the flexibility of its modular and containerized installations, the energy efficiency of its solution, and its expertise in chemical engineering, the company is confidently entering a new phase of its development, notably with the registration of its 3 new brands: TMW Technologies, TMW Engineering, and TMW Consulting.
