Egypt puts seal on desalination sea change

The infrastructure blitz being rolled out by President Sisi has made its mark with a new desalination project. The Red Sea plant - the largest ever to be built in Egypt - marks a genuine change in direction for Egyptian water.

Egypt has made its biggest commitment to seawater desalination to date, with the breaking of ground for the country's largest ever SWRO plant, which will serve the Red Sea city of Hurghada.

The 80,000m3/d facility marks an important step forward in water planning in the country by making a major city completely independent from the Nile. Until now, cities away from the Nile were supplied by pumping water across the desert, an expensive process that uses a significant amount of energy. The new desalination plant will be built by Dubai-headquartered contractor and investor Metito for the Ministry of Housing, Utilities and Urban Development, through its procuring body NOPWASD. The company has a base for the design-build wing of its business in Cairo, and has benefitted considerably from the focus on infrastructure building promoted by Egyptian president Sisi. Last month, for example, Metito announced that it had secured four municipal water and wastewater projects worth a combined EGP220 million ($29 million). Karim Madwar, the managing director of Metito's Egypt business, told GWI that while infrastructure in general is booming in Egypt as the government looks to invest in the country's growth, desalination in particular has finally arrived as a serious growth business in the municipal sector. "Desal was never really on the radar in Egypt, but now it has arrived, and there will be more coming up," Madwar said. "Hurghada has relied on small desal plants in the past, but only for the hotels, and for the city you had this line from Cairo. It was a very expensive process, more expensive than the desalination plant will be, in fact." Metito will operate the Hurghada plant for a year before handing it over to the ministry. At the same time, it has also started work on a 10,000m3/d facility to serve the tourist complex being built by Emaar at Marassi on Egypt's Mediterranean coast. Egypt's Red Sea coast is set to become a site for massive investment in desalination in Egypt in the years and decades to come. as the country looks to build out its industrial base in the Suez Canal area, as well as potentially looking into the construction of a new capital city in the area between Cairo and the Sinai ( see GWI April 2015, p8 ). Around 750,000m3/d of desalination capacity is expected to be needed on the Gulf of Suez, north of Hurghada, by 2050 to support the ambitious build-out, matched by another 450,000m3/d at the other end of the Suez Canal by Port Said. Meanwhile, a second desalination project, also with a capacity of 80,000m3/d, has been proposed by a consortium comprising RWL Water and Orascom Construction. The pair signed an MOU with the government to carry out a feasibility study relating to a BOT-type contract to build the plant in Sharm El Sheikh. However, sources close to the Egyptian government indicated to GWI that the project is not considered a priority, and may not progress beyond its current stage. In 2011, just 166,000m3/d of desalinated water was produced in Egypt, largely through private facilities serving hotels and other commercial developments. There is now little doubt that it forms a major part of municipal planning, both through EPC contracts such as the one awarded to Metito, and as part of the country's long-awaited PPP scheme. The country's PPP Central Unit still plans to award a number of desalination plants in the Red Sea, Sinai and Matrouh governorates, but the process has been held up by delays to the giant Abu Rawash wastewater project that has been the unit's major focus for the past five years.

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