Business water for Scottish manufacturers

Scottish Water defines trade effluent as any wastewater discharged during the operation of a business or industrial process. That includes process water, cooling water and wash water. Any business with a trade effluent discharge must obtain a trade effluent consent, which sets limits on volume and content. Smaller discharges may be covered by a Letter of Authorisation instead.

You apply through your licensed retailer, using a form called a Trade Effluent Notice. Scottish Water won’t issue a consent until a retailer is appointed, and it aims to decide within 90 days. When you switch retailer, ask how they’ll manage your consent, sampling and reviews.

Charges are based on how much effluent you discharge and how strong it is. Scottish Water’s 2026/27 wholesale charges scheme sets a charge per cubic metre for reception and conveyance, for biological treatment and for treating suspended solids, along with a minimum charge.

The treatment rates are set against standard strengths of 350 mg/l and 250 mg/l. The formula scales them by your measured strength against the standard strength, so stronger effluent costs more per cubic metre.

Allowances matter too. Scottish Water accepts claims for water lost through processes, for example through evaporation, as long as you have supporting evidence. It also sets domestic allowances, such as 25 litres per day per member of staff. A plant with cooling towers that has never claimed an evaporation allowance is a common place to look.

Meter size sets a fixed annual charge, and larger meters carry a higher fixed charge in Scottish Water’s 2026/27 wholesale charges scheme. The volume charge per cubic metre also falls in bands as usage rises.

A plant on a meter that’s bigger than it needs pays a higher fixed charge every year. Resizing needs Scottish Water and your retailer, and the meter still has to cope with your peak demand, so it’s worth checking against your actual flow data.

Clearsight arranges AMR data loggers for customers. A logger reads the meter at short intervals. That lets a factory see its overnight baseline, spot a leak over a weekend, and support an allowance claim with real figures. If your sites don’t have loggers, we can talk about arranging them alongside the retail contract.

A food producer might have a plant in Fife, a warehouse in Glasgow and a site in England. All three can usually be quoted together. Each supply has its own SPID. We confirm them all, then ask each retailer on the panel to quote for every site together. We also ask how they’d handle consolidated billing and trade effluent admin across all of them.

We’d take your addresses and SPIDs, then check meter sizes against usage. We’d also check whether each trade effluent consent and allowance still reflects how the plant runs. Then we’d get quotes from the panel and lay them out side by side.

You’d see the wholesale charges once. Underneath would be each retailer’s fee, billing basis, contract terms and how it handles trade effluent. We’d also price AMR loggers where they’d help.

Get a manufacturing water quote. Send your site addresses and SPIDs. We don’t need a bill.