Navigating Waters: Insights from North America's Largest Water Quality Event
Key Takeaways from WEFTEC 2025
Members of Baird’s Water & Flow Technologies team attended WEFTEC 2025, the Water Environment Federation's Technical Exhibition and Conference, in Chicago last week. The conference is the largest annual water quality exhibition in North America. At the event, our team connected with industry experts and private equity professionals to discuss the latest trends and opportunities in the sector.
Read more for key takeaways from our discussions and insight on the current state of water industry.
Building Resilience: Challenges Facing the Water Industry
WEFTEC 2025’s overarching theme was resiliency in the face of significant and accelerating challenges being faced by the water industry, including:
- Maintaining aging infrastructure
- Mounting capital demands
- Climate change and catastrophic weather events
- Water scarcity
- Energy intensity and usage
- Aging workforce and skills gap
- Emerging contaminants and regulatory requirements
These challenges are not incremental – they are systemic issues requiring significant capital investment and technological innovation, creating a fertile environment for companies that can deliver innovative yet implementable solutions. As these headwinds compound, they’re becoming increasingly existential, requiring more rapid technology deployment from an industry that has historically been seen as a slow, more skeptical adopter.
Strategic Solutions: What’s Driving Innovation
We noted several key thematics emerging across conference exhibitors seeking to address these challenges, including:
- Digitization and AI
- Automation and digitization of traditionally manual or mechanical processes and products to improve precision and system integration as well as allow for monitoring and data aggregation
- Advanced controls / monitoring technology proliferating to drive operational efficiency and business continuity, including filling workforce gaps and improving preventative maintenance to avoid catastrophic failures
- AI is now more than just a buzzword – it’s evolved into a practical solution employed to reduce energy costs, optimize treatment processes and improve efficiency of existing assets
- Circular Water Economy
- Users increasingly addressing water loss through advanced detection, predictive analytics and innovative solutions to improve both water conservation and reduce non-revenue water
- Shift away from linear water lifecycle strategies to viewing water as renewable resource, including recovery of nutrients, water and waste to repurpose / monetize byproducts and reduce cost
- Improving management of natural water ecosystems in the face of increasing usage, pollution and threat from natural disasters (flooding, drought, etc.) to ensure future resource availability
- Emerging Contaminants
- Exhibitors showcased the latest breakthroughs in water treatment technology, including solutions for increasingly regulated contaminants (e.g., PFAS), as well as more nascent but increasingly scrutinized pollutants (e.g., microplastics)
- In addition to treatment, solutions focused on improving the quality of sampling, calibration and maintenance to meet growing regulatory demands for data integrity in water quality management
M&A Opportunities in a Shifting Water Landscape
Overall, WEFTEC featured a clear industry shift towards providing integrated, technology-driven solutions versus standalone products, with many solutions addressing multiple challenges at once and delivering a clear and rapid ROI. This reflects a market becoming increasingly sophisticated, demanding and focused on long-term value and resilience.
The demand for innovative solutions to the multi-trillion-dollar challenges facing the water industry should also drive significant M&A activity from both strategic buyers looking to enhance their portfolios and better serve their customers, as well as private equity investors who can provide the investment and strategy expertise to help middle market companies navigate this industry inflection point.
To discuss these themes and how they may impact your business or future strategy, connect with a member of Baird’s Global Industrial Investment Banking Group.
