Cox to build US $310M desalination plant in Baja California

Spanish company Grupo Cox will build a long-awaited desalination plant in Rosarito, a coastal city in the drought-prone state of Baja California.

The National Water Commission (Conagua) last week awarded a 5.29 billion-peso (about US $310 million) contract to Cox to build both a desalination plant and its pumping station in Rosarito, a town located south of Tijuana on the Pacific coast. The company submitted a bid for the project as the leader of a consortium that includes Mexican company Gami Ingenieria e Instalaciones.

Cox, which has a Mexican subsidiary called Cox de México, acknowledged Conagua’s decision in a statement released on Monday.

“Cox, an international group specializing in critical water and energy infrastructure, has been awarded, through a public tender process, the construction of the Rosarito desalination plant in Baja California, Mexico,” the company said.

“The project, promoted by the National Water Commission (Conagua), represents an investment of US $304 million and will help strengthen water security in the region, benefiting one million people during its first phase,” said Cox, which evidently calculated the cost in dollars using an outdated USD:MXN exchange rate.

The company said that the plant — which has been in the works for years —  is “one of the priority initiatives under Mexico’s National Water Plan and will address the water supply needs of Playas de Rosarito and the south-western area of Tijuana.”

Enrique Riquelme, Cox’s executive chairman, said that the desalination plant project “reaffirms our commitment to Mexico following the acquisition of Iberdrola Mexico.”

“Through this award, we are bringing our expertise in the water sector to a country where we continue to support the development of infrastructure that contributes to people’s well-being and to the country’s sustainable growth,” he said.

“We are proud to collaborate with federal and state authorities on an initiative aligned with the objectives of the National Water Plan and one that will help strengthen the region’s resilience to the challenges associated with climate change,” Riquelme said.

Cox: Desal plant will produce 190 million liters of drinking water per day in first phase 

Cox said that the first phase of the project includes the construction of a desalination plant with the capacity to treat 2,200 liters of seawater per second, “enabling the incorporation of approximately 190 million liters of drinking water per day into the regional water supply system.”

The company said that construction of the plant is expected to be completed in three years.

“Cox will be responsible for the engineering, procurement of specialized equipment and construction of the infrastructure, which will provide a complementary and independent water source from the Colorado River, strengthening water resource availability in Baja California,” Cox said.

“The desalination plant will have a final production capacity of 4,400 liters per second, equivalent to more than 380,000 m³ [380 million liters] of drinking water per day, making it the largest facility of its kind in Latin America,” the company said.

Cox said that the plant will use “reverse osmosis technology, an advanced treatment system that employs semi-permeable membranes to remove salts, minerals and impurities from seawater and convert it into drinking water.”

This technology is recognized for its high operational efficiency, the quality of the water produced and its lower energy intensity compared with other desalination solutions,” the company said.

Cox noted that it operates desalination plants across 16 countries with a combined desalinated water production capacity exceeding 4.4 billion liters per day.

The public tender process 

Cox’s 5.29-billion-peso bid for the desalination plant project was the lowest among three participants in Conagua’s public tender process.

The score for its proposal — 94 out of 100 — was higher than those given to one consortium led by Acciona Agua México and another led by Tecno Arrendamientos y Construcciones.

The federal and Baja California governments will jointly fund the desalination plant.

Two previous tender processes for the desalination plant failed to find a company that was able to meet the technical and economic requirements of the project. Consolidated Water was previously contracted to build the plant, but the Baja California government canceled the company’s contract in 2019 and a lengthy legal dispute ensued.

With reports from Expansión, El Sol de México, EFE and BNamericas