El Realito Aqueduct

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In July 2009, a consortium led by Conoisa and Aqualia was awarded a 25 year BOT contract to build, operate and maintain the El Realito Aqueduct water supply and purification system by the water commission of San Luis Potosi State in Mexico. The El Realito Aqueduct was to bring water to 132km from the El Realito dam on Rio Santa Maria to the city of San Luis Potosi and included a 1m3/second (86,400m3/day) water treatment plant, the 132km pipeline and three pumping stations. The associated dam and reservoir were part of a US$66.2 million public project built in conjunction with the El Realito PPP. Conoisa and Aqualia were subsidiaries of ICA [Mexico, 51%] and FCC [Spain, 49%], respectively. Aquos El Realito was formed as the project company. There were two other final bidders for the project Abengoa [Spain] and IDEAL [Mexico]. Bidding was based on the lowest NPV of payments. A fourth bidder, Makkro was disqualified. The winning bid was 2.71 billion pesos although the original budget was 2.38 billion pesos. The total project cost was US$214.8 million. In July 2011, Banco Santander was the sole lead arranger of US$97.04 million peso denominated syndicated loan with banks Banobras, Banorte and Bajio. The project received a US73.85 million capital grant from FONADIN backed by Banobras and US$43.9 million in equity from the sponsors. The ratio of debt to equity, not including the subsidy was 69:31. Operations commenced in June 2015.