American water company VVater made headlines after announcing a multimillion-dollar partnership with a Fortune 50 food and beverage company Jan. 7. As the first “triple crown” winner of the Time Best Invention Award, CES Best of Innovation Award, and World Future Award in 2025, VVater has made major waves in its mere two years in the water management space.
Water Daily sat down with VVater CEO and Co-Founder Kevin Gast to discuss his plans for the company moving forward, its new Fortune 50 contract, and how it plans to become America’s go-to water company in the next five to 10 years.
Water Daily: Tell us about your journey in the water industry and how VVater came to be.
Kevin Gast: I’ve been in the industry for more than 20 years in a variety of ways. I started at a conglomerate business that worked in water treatment and purification – we’ve probably kissed every frog beneath the sun when it comes to water treatment technologies. Then we created a water technology that could be beneficial on a planetary scale and operate as a standalone entity. I moved over as its CEO and chairman, and resigned from my previous role.
I’m one of the co-founders of VVater, and the other co-founder is actually my father. We’re both Kevin Gast, which can be a bit confusing. We’re a great package deal because he’s great on the technical side of things and is also our chief scientist, while I’m a lot stronger on the business side of things. We complement each other very well.
Your Farady Reactors have received a lot of recognition this past year. Can you explain how they work and what brought this recognition about?
With our Farady Reactors, you can treat water without using filters, membranes, chemicals, and biologicals. This offers significant savings, a much smaller footprint, and allows you to treat dirtier water to a higher standard. This includes PFAS destruction, nitrates, phosphates, and a variety of other things.
The other big breakthrough is our energy usage, as we use an alternating electrical current (AC). Traditional electrical water treatment solutions use high-voltage direct current (DC) that ranges between 50-120 volts of electricity. VVater’s reactors use 1-12 volts, which is more energy-efficient and cost-effective.
Speaking of this recognition, you just signed a major contract with a Fortune 50 food and beverage company. What challenges was this client facing that made them choose VVater over traditional solutions?
VVater recently announced a new partnership with a Fortune 50 food and beverage company. | Photo by VVater
The second was keeping up with the maintenance and management of the system. Our systems are fully automated and self-intuitive, they don't need to maintain the Farady Reactor, they don't need to have people employed with Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) certifications to handle chemicals, and they don’t have to do extensive training for operators.
The Farady Reactor is a ready-to-use machine that they can hook up, press play, and it does the rest for them. Since the system is fully automated with AI-driven solutions, the headache to manage and maintain becomes a lot less.
How is VVater choosing which markets to focus on in the future?
Data centers are going through a big boom right now. I always say that energy and water are hooked by the hip. With all of these massive data center developments rolling out, all of them need a water supply. A lot of them are closed-loop systems, which means once they have been filled up, they're relatively self-sustainable.
Food and beverage and industrial players are also struggling to meet regulatory requirements on their water discharge. So after their manufacturing process, they're left with a liquid that they need to get rid of. There are certain regulatory compliances that they need to meet, and if they don't meet that, they get fined quite extensively. We can assist them in a very quick and inexpensive fashion to get them in compliance.
We also work with some of the biggest distilleries and manufacturers out there that want to build a new manufacturing facility or take their own discharge water and feed it back into their bottling system or distillery. We give them the ability to do that so they don't have to find new water sources, which is another big advantage.
You're positioning VVater as America's next water company. What does that vision look like in the next five to 10 years?
I'm a firm believer that we can solve the significant water problems a lot of our customers are having. We're an engineering company first and foremost, and we're trying to solve these complex problems to eventually solve the bigger planetary issue of water shortage.
Even though I am from South Africa, I am exceptionally patriotic and very much a firm believer of “made in America” by Americans for Americans. We want to be seen as the company that, if you have a water problem, you'll be phoning us and nobody else because we can offer a solution that is the most cost-efficient, time-efficient, and overall the right solution.
Hopefully, in five to 10 years from now, when you open up the Oxford Dictionary and look up the word water under “W,” it will have a break in the middle to make two V's instead.
Editor’s note: This interview was edited for length and clarity.
