Ceará Water Utility Signs Agreement to Start Construction of Largest Desalination Plant in Brazil

en.Wedoany.com Reported - The Water and Sewage Company of Ceará State (Cagece) signed an authorization agreement on July 16 to begin construction of the Ceará Desalination Plant (Dessal do Ceará). With a design capacity of 1 cubic meter per second, equivalent to treating one thousand liters of desalinated water per second, the plant will become the largest desalination facility in Brazil upon completion. It is estimated that the plant's water output will be sufficient to supply approximately 720,000 residents in the Fortaleza metropolitan area. Operations will commence within five months after the completion of the initial phase, which includes pipeline industrialization services, construction of water transmission and drainage pipelines, and the construction of a new small stadium. The project will be carried out by the Special Purpose Entity (SPE) Águas de Fortaleza, jointly established by Marquise Infraestrutura, PB Construções S.A., and Abengoa Água S.A., in partnership with Cagece. The Installation License (LI) was issued in September 2025 by the Ceará State Environmental Superintendence (Semace).

Renan Carvalho, Director of Marquise Infraestrutura, stated that the project employs advanced desalination solutions, aiming to deliver an engineering work characterized by technical excellence, operational rigor, and long-term sustainability for future generations. In a statement, Carvalho emphasized that the Ceará Desalination Plant sets a new benchmark for water infrastructure in Brazil, featuring high technical efficiency and industrial scale, making it the largest operational plant in Brazil and the largest facility for human consumption in Latin America.

Marquise is also involved in projects such as FLT (Transnodestina Logística railway), CIPP (Pecém Industrial and Port Complex), and Eixão das Águas (which channels water from the Castanhão Reservoir to the metropolitan area of the Ceará state capital).