Editorial Article
Water Works: Desalination, Potable Contact and the Approval Nobody Talks About
In Dubai, since 23 November 2022, every drinking water component in new tenders, service authority works and developer projects has had to hold NSF/ANSI/CAN 61 certification. Not a local clause. Not an emirate-specific approval. A named international health-effects standard, written into the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority’s technical specifications, with the practical consequence that a product without that mark is not eligible for approval (NSF, September 2022).
That single line creates a third approval regime in the Gulf construction chemicals market, and it is the one almost nobody plans for. The first is product conformity — the per-model, per-emirate technical approval that governs whether a membrane may be sold. The second is fire and life safety, which governs the height of building a system may be used on. The third is potable contact: whether a material may touch water that people drink.
It is a different kind of gate, because it asks a different kind of question. The first two ask whether a product performs. This one asks whether a product leaches.
What the standard actually covers
NSF/ANSI/CAN 61 applies to any material or product that may come into contact with drinking water or with drinking water treatment chemicals, from source to tap. Its scope is wider than most suppliers assume: process media, protective materials, joining and sealing materials, pipes and related products, mechanical devices used in treatment, transmission and distribution systems, and mechanical plumbing devices. The standard dates from 1988 and is one of the most widely recognised health-effects certifications in the world.
For a construction chemicals business, that scope is a map of products that need a certificate nobody in the commercial team is tracking. Protective linings for reservoirs, tanks and pipe interiors. Epoxy and cementitious coatings on the inside of potable water infrastructure. Sealants, gaskets, jointing compounds and adhesives anywhere in the potable chain. Repair mortars used inside a chamber that will hold drinking water. Injection grouts in a leaking potable structure — where the repair material becomes part of the wetted surface.
The test itself is what makes this regime structurally different. A performance certificate asks what the product does to the substrate. A health-effects certificate asks what the substrate — in this case, water — does to the product, and what comes out. It is an extraction test on a finished formulation, which produces a consequence that has nothing to do with chemistry and everything to do with business model: the certification is formulation-locked.
Change the biocide. Substitute a dispersant because an upstream input got expensive. Move to a different pigment source. Any of those can invalidate a certification that cost real money and real time, because the certified object is the formulation as tested, not the product family it belongs to.
Why that matters more here than anywhere else
That constraint collides directly with the cost dynamics of this market.
The Gulf’s formulators buy almost all of their upstream chemistry — monomers, dispersions, cellulose ethers, redispersible powders, emulsions — from producers outside the region. When those input prices move, the rational commercial response is to reformulate or to substitute. In most product families that is a normal, healthy behaviour. For a potable-contact product, it is a recertification event.
So the same price pressure that makes a blender competitive in tile adhesives makes it slow and expensive in potable water. And the buying tier that notices is not a contractor — it is a utility, an asset owner or a municipality, with a specification team that knows exactly which mark is required and no commercial incentive to accept an ambiguity.
This is the mirror image of the argument about scale in the rest of this category. A multinational with a global certification programme already holds the mark across a range of products and can extend it at marginal cost. A regional blender has to fund a full certification for each product it wants in the potable chain, and then cannot reformulate freely afterwards. The moat is not the standard. It is the sunk cost of the certification plus the loss of flexibility that follows it.
Abu Dhabi asks the question differently, on purpose
If Dubai’s route is a named standard, Abu Dhabi’s is a named principle, and the difference is commercially significant.
The Department of Energy’s Guide to Water Supply Regulations 2024 requires tanks and cisterns holding wholesome water to be of a suitable grade and material meeting BS 6920-1 or equivalent standards approved by the DoE. The construction material, lining, gaskets, adhesives, coating or any other part in contact with stored water must not impart taste, colour, odour or toxicity, nor promote microbiological growth — and a certificate from the relevant Abu Dhabi authorities and/or recognised international institutions such as NSF or WRc may be requested. Approval from a globally accredited water institution, WRAS among them, appears in the same guide, alongside a separate DoE guide for chemicals and products that come into contact with drinking water.
Read that carefully and two things follow.
The route is broader, and explicitly permits equivalents. That is an opportunity for a supplier holding BS 6920 or WRAS rather than NSF 61 — and it is an ambiguity for anyone trying to plan a certification budget across the Emirates.
The two largest Gulf markets now require different proofs of the same property. This is the identical structure that governs product approval and fire performance: one jurisdiction asks for a named certificate, the other asks for a level of assurance and accepts a family of standards, and the supplier absorbs the multiplication.
For a category that already carries a per-model, per-emirate approval burden, potable contact adds a per-standard burden on top of it. A product range intended for water infrastructure in both emirates may need two international certifications, two sets of extractive testing, and two technical files that cannot be merged.
The demand behind it is not marginal
It would be easy to treat this as a niche compliance topic. In the Gulf it is not, for a reason that is geographical rather than commercial: the region’s drinking water is overwhelmingly desalinated, so the potable-contact surface begins at the plant outlet and runs through transmission mains, reservoirs, distribution networks, building storage tanks, pumps and internal plumbing. Every one of those wetted surfaces is a specification point, and every specification point is a certification requirement.
Set that against the region’s investment profile. The Gulf is spending heavily on water security, desalination capacity and network rehabilitation, and the asset owners are utility-scale buyers running prequalification processes rather than project-by-project purchasing. This is the most institutionally sophisticated buying tier in the market — the one least likely to accept a substitution and most likely to write a named standard into a tender.
Which means the potable-contact regime may be the clearest example in this category of a barrier that is not about chemistry at all. The product is ordinary. The certificate is the licence.
What would break it
A single GCC potable-contact list. If the Gulf Standardization Organization published a harmonised list of accepted standards and mutual recognition followed, the multiplication would end. This is the same risk that hangs over product approval, and it would be more consequential here because the underlying certifications are international rather than local — mutual recognition would hand the advantage straight to whoever already holds the widest global portfolio.
NSF 61 becoming the regional default. If Abu Dhabi’s equivalence route narrowed to a named standard to end the ambiguity, the market would consolidate around the companies that already hold it. A harmonising reform can just as easily entrench an incumbent as displace one.
Domestic certification capacity. If a Gulf laboratory were accredited to test to these standards locally, the cost and time to certify would fall, and the barrier would weaken for regional producers specifically. Nothing in the current landscape suggests that is imminent.
What to watch
Two signals. First, whether Saudi Arabia’s water sector names a specific standard for potable-contact materials, or follows Abu Dhabi’s equivalence model — that choice, made once, will set the certification architecture for the largest market in the region. Second, whether any regional producer announces a potable-contact certification as a commercial claim rather than a compliance footnote. The first tells you how the barrier will be shaped. The second tells you someone has decided to build a business behind it.
The regional regulatory and competitive picture is set out in the GCC Construction Chemicals market report, with the global product-family economics in the Waterproofing and Construction Chemicals market report.
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The Certificate Portfolio sets out the first of the three regimes — product conformity, priced per model and per emirate. The Certificate Decides the Height sets out the second, where the scope of the certificate determines the buildings a system may be used on. This is the third, and it is the one that constrains what a supplier may put in the pail.
Frequently Asked Questions
What potable water certification does the Gulf require?
From 23 November 2022, drinking water components in all new tenders, service authority works and development projects in Dubai have had to achieve NSF/ANSI/CAN 61 certification, incorporated into DEWA's technical specifications. Abu Dhabi takes a different route: the Department of Energy's Guide to Water Supply Regulations 2024 requires tanks and cisterns to meet BS 6920-1 or equivalent standards approved by the DoE, with certification from recognised institutions such as NSF or WRc, and approval from a globally accredited water institution such as WRAS.
Which construction chemicals products need potable contact certification?
Any material or product that may come into contact with drinking water or drinking water treatment chemicals, from source to tap: process media, protective materials, joining and sealing materials, pipes and related products, and mechanical devices in treatment, transmission, distribution and plumbing. In construction chemicals terms that means reservoir and pipe linings, tank coatings, sealants, gaskets, adhesives, repair mortars and injection grouts inside any wetted structure.
Why does health-effects certification constrain formulation?
Because it is an extraction test on a finished formulation rather than a performance test on a substrate. The certified object is the formulation as tested, so changing a biocide, substituting a dispersant or moving to a different pigment source can invalidate it. That collides with the normal behaviour of a Gulf formulator, which buys upstream chemistry internationally and reformulates when input prices move.
How do Dubai and Abu Dhabi differ on potable contact approval?
Dubai asks for a named standard, NSF/ANSI/CAN 61, through DEWA's technical specifications. Abu Dhabi asks for a level of assurance and explicitly permits equivalents — BS 6920-1 or equivalent approved by the DoE, with certificates from recognised institutions such as NSF or WRc, and WRAS approval appearing in the same guide. A supplier selling into both emirates may therefore need two international certifications and two technical files that cannot be merged.