Cape Town begins partner procurement for Faure New Water Scheme

The City of Cape Town has started procurement for a private partner to finance, design, build, operate and maintain the proposed Faure New Water Scheme.

The public-private partnership forms part of the City’s programme to diversify water supply beyond rainfall-dependent sources. The project is intended to use advanced treatment processes to purify treated wastewater from the upgraded Zandvliet Wastewater Treatment Works to drinking-water standards.

Two-stage procurement

The first stage is a request for qualifications. The City is seeking consortia, investors, contractors, operators and technology providers with relevant large-scale water and PPP experience.

Respondents will be assessed for technical, financial and operational capability. Qualifying teams are expected to proceed to a request-for-proposals stage scheduled for the second half of 2027.

The City Council approved use of the PPP model in principle in December 2025. The current process is procurement, not a construction award. A preferred bidder, financial close and construction start would require later confirmed milestones.

Part of the new-water target

The City says the scheme is one component of a programme targeting an additional 300 million litres of drinking water a day from new sources by the mid-2030s.

The qualification notice is identified as Tender 081S/2026/27. Interested parties must use the official tender record for the controlling documents, deadlines and amendments rather than relying on this news summary.

What we will track next

The next useful update should connect physical progress to service performance. For Cape Town begins partner procurement for Faure New Water Scheme, that means identifying which assets are commissioned, who operates them, whether water-quality or effluent tests are current and how reliability is measured after handover. Published percentages are easier to assess when the reporting date, design capacity, actual flow and outstanding work appear together.

Readers should also look for power resilience, maintenance funding, trained operators and a defects process. Pipes, pumps, reservoirs and treatment units form one chain; completion of one component does not prove that the full service is working.