Water treatment supplier Ionics has signed equipment supply and multi-year service contracts totaling $320 million with a consortium led by the Kharafi Group for the design, construction, ownership, operation and maintenance of a 100 million gallon per day wastewater treatment facility at Sulaibiya near Kuwait City. The plant is expected to begin operation in 2005.
The signing of the contracts took place in conjunction with the finalization of bank financing which will enable the project company to commence construction. The Sulaibiya facility will be the largest membrane-based water reclamation and reuse facility in the world.
Ionics will participate in the project, directly, and through several of its European subsidiaries as a 25 percent equity partner in the project company, as the designer and supplier of the reverse osmosis (RO) and ultrafiltration (UF) membrane-based water purification systems and as an operator of the membrane portion of the facility over the 27.5 year contract period.
The Kharafi Group is a Middle East corporation with diversified activities and a $3.3 billion turnover. In early 2001, the Kharafi Group consortium won a 30-year concession from the Kuwaiti government to recover and upgrade tertiary-treated wastewater from Kuwait City and the surrounding area. The purified water will be used to satisfy agricultural requirements which are currently impacting the drinking water supply.
The projected revenues to the company over the life of the contract are expected to total over two billion dollars. The Kharafi Group has formed a separate joint venture company to construct the civil works and facility infrastructure as well as other portions of the project.
US-based Ionics is a separations technology company involved in the manufacture and sale of membranes, equipment and own and operate services for the purification, disinfection, concentration, treatment and analysis of water, wastewater and ultrapure water. — (menareport.com)
© 2002 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
