The company Juan Azcue is the new member of AgritechMurcia and has been working for sixty years with the world’s most prestigious specialized manufacturers in water pumping. It allows it to face challenges such as extracting at a depth of more than 500 meters and in conditions that only its engineering is capable of overcoming.
The well-known Murcian firm aims at internationalization and is developing projects in Peru and Chile.
Antonio Bernal is an industrial technical engineer. He has been managing the company Juan Azcue, dedicated to the sale, repair and installation of electric pumps for 15 years. It is a company of maximum prestige in the sector, with offices in Murcia, Almería and Albacete. It has joined the AgritechMurcia ecosystem, since its vocation is international.
The company Juan Azcue, as a firm dedicated to water technology, has as its motto “to raise water efficiently and durably”. They have demonstrated this in their international work in Chile and Peru, as well as in trade missions in which they have been present in Uruguay, Paraguay, Argentina, Guatemala and Ecuador.
They work with the highest quality, robustness and efficiency hydraulic machines in the market. They represent the prestigious manufacturers INDAR, FLYGT, WATEX, EBARA, DAGSO, covering all types of pumps, either submersible: clean and waste water; or surface: horizontal, split chamber, vertical, monobloc.
The company complements the range of machine supply with the complete installation (mechanical and electrical) required, the subsequent technical service and technical assistance provided by a large engineering department.
The company’s commitment is to promote the responsible use of water extraction equipment, with state-of-the-art technology and respect for natural resources.
What is your hallmark as a leading company in the sector?
The company Juan Azcue has been working for 60 years in the Spanish market and always with the same objective; to move water from one point to another with maximum efficiency and reliability. In this field, the company is highly specialized in groundwater extraction since it was the origin of its work.
This has been, as always, our core business, selling pumps and repairing. We are the only company in Spain that has a network structure of repair shops and after sales service supported by a large technical department. Since our beginnings we have worked and continue to work with the Spanish brand of submersible equipment Ingeteam Indar Machines. We are their exclusive distributors for the southern half of Spain and our workshops support the Technical Service of the brand, you could say that we are sister companies.
Does the market require new challenges?
As time goes by, the company evolves and we develop different services around our core business. We started this diversification with the installation department of the equipment in the well including the manufacture and supply of the different elements that compose it.
With the evolution of the times, we have also created our own range of submersible pumps and motors, adapted to the needs of the markets in which we work. This own product, Watex, has allowed us to grow in the national market and to internationalize our sales being already present in several countries.
Our third diversification pillar has been hydraulic works, jobs that we had been working on to a greater or lesser extent since the beginning with a high percentage of subcontracting. We began to perceive that we had more and more demand, until we decided to create an exclusive department, with its own resources, to attend to any type of hydraulic work, desalination, irrigation, purification…. It was launched two years ago and has given magnificent results, since it has allowed us to double our turnover in a short period of time and to reach very interesting growth quotas.
Where do you have a more consolidated market?
Our scope of work is, above all, national. Our workshops are located in Murcia, Albacete and Almería. These are the strategic areas of the driest part of Spain, where it rains the least and, therefore, it is essential to extract water from the subsoil.
We work a lot in Madrid with Canal de Isabel Segunda. We have maintenance contracts for all the well pumps in Madrid, several contracts with water supply companies in Andalusia, and with other wastewater treatment companies throughout the country.
Does climate change change the needs?
We have recently completed a project in Ourense to equip wells, something unthinkable a few years ago, that Ourense would need well water.
Everything is changing a lot with climate change. Where it used to rain generously, rainfall is less, so much so that water is scarce.
Rain has priority to maintain the flow of the rivers and the confederations do not allow water to be taken from there. Therefore, on many occasions, what can be done are wells, as we have found in Ourense.
We are convinced that this will happen in many other places that so far have no tradition of extracting groundwater, not only in Spain, but also all over the world. We are in Chile and Peru, which have not extracted groundwater either and are increasingly in need of it.
We are readapting our product for the international market, as groundwater is increasingly deeper and of poorer quality. Therefore, we intend that our machines, from the beginning, are already prepared with the necessary materials and extras to work in these demanding conditions.
What makes the difference?
Our dimension as a structured company with a network of workshops and our own branches, our quality products, our excellent after-sales service composed of 10 engineers that make up our technical department, and our wide range of services that allow Juan Azcue to carry out from the design to the execution of any hydraulic project.
Why be with AgritechMurcia?
If we think about exporting, it is necessary to belong to this business ecosystem that brings a lot of added value. We have the necessary material and knowledge to take advantage of the impact that AgritechMurcia generates, and expand further.
Our knowledge is extensive after sixty years working in the Region of Murcia and the Spanish Levante, with the worst conditions in the world to extract groundwater, people from Israel, Egypt and the United States have come to see our management.
We do things that are not done anywhere. Extracting water 500 meters deep. In such bad conditions, you have to install special machines to work in those conditions. Not everyone has experience in that. In fact, pump manufacturers do not manufacture for such extreme conditions. They design pumps for normal conditions. The submersible well pump, also known as the “pencil pump”, is 0.3% of the existing pump fleet worldwide, and not all multinationals want to invest in a product that is such a small percentage on a global scale.
We have found a niche market that, when we go to other countries, they are impressed. Maybe they don’t need it now, but in the future, they will. We open those doors.
What we sell abroad is knowledge and know-how. We transmit tranquility of control of the situation in countries like Chile, which do not usually use this type of systems. This is the secret of our success, not only our products, but also our advice.
