Rubicon Water address global water challenges

Rubicon Water has a vision: to increase global food and fibre production by improving water management from the source to the crops.

The company’s solutions enable governments, water management authorities and farmers to manage their water resources more efficiently.

‘In the coming decades, many regions around the world are expected to face either absolute or seasonal water scarcity conditions,’ says Bruce Rodgerson, Rubicon Water CEO. ‘This is driven by increasing competition for water and more variable water availability due to factors such as climate change and population growth.

‘Our solutions significantly improve the distribution efficiency of water in large-scale irrigation networks. This makes more water available to support the future prosperity of irrigated agriculture.’

Making more water available

Rubicon Water was established in 1995. The business originally focused on traditional remote management solutions for irrigation water authorities.

But it quickly turned its attention to addressing a fundamental industry challenge: how to provide quality, on-demand water supply services to farms while reducing water losses in the supply system.

Rubicon’s flagship solution, TCC Network Control, autonomously monitors and controls the delivery of water from the point of source down to the farm. By accurately controlling the flow of water in these systems that can stretch thousands of kilometres, distribution efficiencies can improve by as much as 30%.

This often equates to enormous volumes of water that can be retained in storage for future farming use or even allocated to the environment.

Addressing global water challenges from regional Victoria

Headquartered in Melbourne, Rubicon’s research and development facility includes a large, purpose-built, hydraulic flow testing lab in Shepparton, Victoria.

From here, it has designed, built and installed more than 35,000 control and measurement devices in 17 countries. To date, Rubicon holds 218 patents that cover 21 jurisdictions.

Modernising irrigation regions in India

In 2019, Rubicon Water was awarded the contract to modernise an irrigation region located in northern Karnataka, India. The project marks a significant breakthrough for Rubicon in the Indian market. It is one of the largest irrigation modernisation projects of its type in the world.

The project aims to address water shortage issues in the region by installing accurate water control devices within the existing large system. The system comprises approximately 3,000 km of manual-operated channels that attempt to service 400,000 hectares of agricultural land.

The project scope includes the installation of more than 4,000 automated flow control gates and interconnected communications infrastructure. These will precisely manage the delivery of water to farmers located along the Narayanpur Left Bank Canal (NLBC) system.

When complete, water efficiencies within the NLBC system are expected to improve by up to 20%, equating to millions of litres of recovered water.

Rubicon won the Sustainability award at the 2022 Australian Export Awards.