Consolidated Water names Sachin Chawla as SVP strategy and growth
Consolidated Water Co. has appointed Sachin Chawla to the newly created role of senior vice president for strategy and growth. The NASDAQ-listed water treatment operator said Chawla, who it describes as bringing more than 25 years of water industry experience, will oversee business development, sales and marketing, and will support chief executive Rick McTaggart on mergers and acquisitions as part of the company's strategic growth plan.
The appointment is primarily a personnel announcement, and Consolidated Water did not disclose any new deal, contract award, capital commitment or strategic target alongside it. The release offers the appointment as a signal of commercial ambition rather than a discrete transaction.
Company backdrop
Consolidated Water designs, builds and operates seawater desalination facilities — plants that remove salt and impurities from seawater to produce potable water — across the Cayman Islands, The Bahamas and the British Virgin Islands, as well as water treatment and reuse facilities in the United States. It reported record retail water volumes in Grand Cayman during 2025 and won new water treatment contract awards in Colorado and California expected to contribute revenue in 2026.
In the first quarter of 2026 the company commissioned a desalination facility on Cat Island in The Bahamas. A second Cat Island plant is scheduled to come online in the second quarter of 2026, and the company said it expects to begin construction later this year on a 1.7 million-gallon-per-day desalination project in Hawaii — its most significant announced US project.
McTaggart said Chawla's background in "large-scale desalination projects, public utility operations and complex project development" would help the company broaden its market reach. Chawla, who holds an MSc in environmental science and engineering from Oregon Health & Science University, said he joined the company as it looks to expand into new markets and diversify revenue streams.
Market context
Desalination is a capital-intensive, operationally specialised segment of the broader water infrastructure market. Seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) — the dominant technology for new desalination capacity — has seen energy costs fall significantly over the past decade as membrane efficiency has improved and renewable power has become cheaper, though SWRO remains more expensive per cubic metre than conventional freshwater treatment. Consolidated Water operates in a niche between large state-owned utilities and pure-play engineering contractors, managing both the capital build and the long-term operations and maintenance contract.
Water scarcity is increasingly framed as a climate-adaptation investment theme. Caribbean island nations and arid US states — Arizona, California, Hawaii — face structural supply constraints that make desalination commercially attractive despite its cost. Infrastructure investors, sovereign wealth funds and specialist water-sector funds have been expanding allocations into water treatment and reuse assets, viewing long-term utility-style contracts as inflation-linked, recession-resilient cashflows.
Consolidated Water's Hawaii project, if it proceeds to construction later in 2026 as indicated, would represent a meaningful step into the continental US market beyond its existing treatment contracts. Investors will watch for the company to name its Hawaii offtake counterparty, confirm financial close on the Cat Island second plant, and detail any M&A targets that Chawla's appointment is intended to accelerate.