Azuria Water Solutions Making Waves in Water Market

Missouri-based, $2.5 billion Azuria Water Solutions has been making waves in the water market over the last five years through a series of high-profile acquisitions of some of the industry’s leading and pioneering trenchless companies, changing the trenchless landscape along the way.

Most recently was the blockbuster acquisition of Waterline Renewal Technologies (WRT), which houses four trenchless companies under its umbrella in LMK, Perma-Liner, AP/M Permaform and LightRay and last summer’s acquisition of BLD Services, the largest lateral lining installer in the country.

Other, smaller deals have been made over the last few years that have strengthened Azuria’s position at or near the top of the water rehab market systemically adding the missing pieces to its one-stop water solutions portfolio from the contractor and technology sectors. A name change from Aegion to Azuria Water Solutions happened in 2024.

Usually a quiet, keep-your-head-down company, Azuria — the company whose founder Eric Wood brought cured-in-place pipe (CIPP) to North America more than 50 years ago — has shed that image over the last five years, with one that puts the accelerator pedal to the floor, acquiring company after company to fortify its goal of creating a one-stop water solutions provider.

With each strategic move, Azuria secures its place as one of the top trenchless companies in the water, stormwater and wastewater markets.

Led by CEO Rob Tullman and chief commercial officer Robert Moorhead, Azuria has renewed energy and sense of purpose as it continues to look at more opportunities to expand its more than 7,000-member global workforce. The way they talk about Azuria and its vision for the future exudes ambition, enthusiasm, and confidence. A different mindset is in place.“

We are a completely different company than what we were five years ago. It’s a completely different universe,” Tullman says. “It is really easy to sit there and do the same thing every day. It’s hard to transform a company. We will be the leader. Do you want to be on the winning Super Bowl team? That is us.”

“We continue to look for ways to expand our offerings both on the product side, as well as own installation capabilities. That is our M&A theme and strategy,” Moorhead says. “We’ve moved a long way past the old Aegion. It’s a very, very different company than what it was five years ago.”

Making Moves

The company, formerly publicly traded, went private in 2021 after New Mountain Capital acquired Azuria’s assets. Tullman describes this transition as a turning point that reshaped Azuria’s approach to business. Freed from the pressures of reporting earnings and maintaining conservative spending for public investors, the company gained greater flexibility.

According to Tullman, private equity ownership enabled Azuria to take on projects and pursue goals that wouldn’t have been possible as a public company.

Further cementing this new structure came in April 2026 when Azuria and Inframark finalized previously announced plans to combine to form an independent water solutions and services platform.

The strategy Azuria has employed combines three areas: Contractor, Product and Geography. The deals have included rehab contractors and installers, technology makers and service providers dotting regions of the U.S. landscape not already in Azuria’s suite of companies. Along the way, Azuria has added UV CIPP, lateral lining and manhole rehabilitation offerings to its solutions portfolio, as well as expanded its customer base beyond municipal base, adding residential, commercial and industrial customers.

Noted above, WRT and BLD joined the Azuria family in the last year. Over the last five years the acquisitions have included, AM-Liner East, Performance Pipeline Technologies, Infraspec Services, C&L Water Solutions, Culy Contracting and Infrastructure Systems Inc., to name a few.

What is Azuria looking for as a potential acquisition partner? Commonality, potential and strong core values.

“We make sure each is a good match in terms of the cultures of the organizations, the people and the commitment of wanting to be a part of a growing organization,” Moorhead says.

Today and the Future

Azuria’s goal to be the industry-leading, one-stop solutions provider in water rehabilitation is driven by the trenchless market itself. The global need to address the aging, deteriorating state of our water and wastewater infrastructure grows each day, and the scale of the rehab projects also grow each day. The amount of work ahead is astronomical.

“We have people coming to us with projects of scale we have never seen before. Very few companies can even bid on or execute them. These are $100-plus million projects,” Tullman says. “[The projects] need people who can handle the kind of scale of work that needs to be done.”

Tullman sees companies such as Azuria as extensions of the public works sector, who are in dire need of help when it comes to taking on these massive rehabilitation projects to sustain, manage or upgrade their infrastructure assets.

“We are using technology to help them better understand the market and better understand how they can plan to spend on infrastructure,” Moorhead says. “We’re invested in tools to use historical data to help us be smarter and more effective in helping cities make decisions. We oftentimes understand them better than [the cities] do.”

The Water People

Tullman’s view of what’s ahead for Azuria is untapped potential and an endless need. Being “The Water People” for the industry is important to him and Azuria.

“We don’t want to be a CIPP provider or a sliplining provider,” he says. “We want to be The Water People. When somebody has an issue with water, they can come to us to be ones who can solve it, better, faster and more efficiently.”

The changes Azuria has made have done wonders for the morale and mindset of its workers and experiencing it play out energizes Moorhead and Tullman.

“When we started this five years ago, it showed us how much runway there is out there, how much demand there is,” Moorhead says. “For us, it’s great seeing our team not just embrace this but grab on to the momentum. It’s fun to see where we can go.”

Sharon M. Bueno is editor of Trenchless Technology.

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