Water. desalination + reuse

INTERVIEW | 12 | Desalination & Water Reuse | February-March 2014 What is your area of command in Abengoa? I am currently spearheading Abengoa's water business. Abengoa's activities include construction, solar, bioenergy and, now that we have sold Befesa, we have removed the industrial waste business from the environmental side, leaving water on its own. It is now one of the four pillars of the company. We started our international water business from scratch in 2005, at which time I was running the international area. The previous water business in Abengoa came from 40 years ago, when we were constructing plants in Spain, Ecuador and other Latin American countries. What have been the key plants in developing your water business? When we looked to expand our share of the global water business, we realised that, while we had long expertise in build-own-transfer (BOT) projects, we had no special technology. We saw that the only way to bring added value into the water market was by bringing technology as well as construction expertise. So we combined desalination with our BOT expertise and began with contracts in Algeria. The Skikda, and Honaine seawater reverse osmosis plants were contracted in 2004-2007. Then we moved into India with the first Chennai desalination plant, which began commercial operation in 2010. Following that, we opened our Qingdao plant in China in 2012, which was the first contract on a BOT basis in that country. What regions are attracting you particularly? We have moved into Africa with the Accra desalination project in Ghana and we have opened an office in Santiago, Chile, looking to obtain work in the industrial sector. Our strategy in doing this will not be just to offer water and desalination, but to include power in the package, which we will do by associating with other companies to supply the power plants. (Since the interview, Abengoa has announced its first desalination project in Chile with a memorandum of understanding with power company AES Gener to build a 19,000 m 3 /d reverse-osmosis desalination plant for the Angamos power plant). Also, in Latin America, we are reinforcing the organisation in Peru. Chile, Peru and Colombia are stable countries at the moment, and these are the ones we want to work in. In addition, we have opened up an office in Abu Dhabi, from which we will cover all the Gulf: Bahrain, Oman, UAE, Qatar, Abengoa expansion driven by pure R&D _________ DW&R interviews, Carlos Cosín Fernández, chairman and CEO of Abengoa Water ___ Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. We have tried to get into the region in the past, but we now have the change from thermal plants towards membranes for desalination. We are very competitive with membrane technology and know-how. What about the North African market nowadays? I can only speak about Algeria and Morocco, where we have been working, and I am very happy with our relationship with those two countries. Everything is running very well, the cooperation is excellent. Then we will have to see what will happen to the stability of Libya – it is not impossible, because the people who developed the projects are still there in the same positions they held before the revolution. Also in sub-Saharan Africa, we are awaiting a tender result in Namibia (a 60,000 m 3 /d seawater desalination plant), where we are competing against Veolia. We have a second project in Ghana (the CARLOS COSIN FERNANDEZ Carlos Cosín Fernández is currently the chairman and CEO of Abengoa Water, the water subsidiary of Abengoa Group. He has worked for Abengoa Group since 2005, first as International Division manager, for the water business division (Befesa Agua) and since beginning of 2011, as general manager of Befesa Water (as part of Befesa Environmental Services). He has been in charge of developing water activities worldwide (such as desalination or water reuse) under EPC or BOOT models. Cosín also spent seven years (1997-2004) at Veolia Water Systems, first as desalination business manager and later he held several managing positions in the Veolia Water branch in Spain. There he restructured the various water activities (drinking, waste water, reuse and process) while at the same time enhancing technology transfer. Prior to working in Veolia, he held several high level positions, most notably, the ownership of a private company that developed and designed heat exchangers. Cosín holds his degree in Agricultural Engineering from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid in Madrid, Spain, where he was born and raised. He is a member of the Steering Group of the European Innovation Partnership on Water (EIP Water) and the Board of Directors of the International Desalination Association.

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