Gulf Construction Online - Acwa awards EPC deal for Rabigh 4 IWP

Saudi Focus

Officials sign the EPC services contract for the Rabigh 4 IWP project.

Acwa awards EPC deal for Rabigh 4 IWP

01 August 2023

Acwa Power, a leading developer, investor, and operator of power generation, water desalination, and green hydrogen plants worldwide, has awarded the engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) services contract for the 600,000-cu-m-day Rabigh 4 Independent Water Plant (IWP) project to a consortium of Power China, SepcoIII and Wetico.

Located on the Red Sea coast, the Rabigh 4 IWP project cost is valued at SR2.54 billion ($677 million) and will mainly serve the Makkah and Madinah regions.

Acwa Power said the financial close for the project, being jointly developed with Haji Abdullah Alireza & Co (Haaco) and Al Moayyed Contracting Group (AMCG), is expected during the third quarter. The company currently operates the Rabigh 3 IWP in the same area, the first desalination plant of its size in the private sector.

With the addition of the Rabigh 4 IWP, Acwa Power will double its desalination capacity in the area to 1.2 million cu m per day and to 6.8 million cu m per day across its portfolio, making it the largest private producer of desalinated water globally.

Speaking at the signing ceremony in Riyadh, Chairman Mohammad Abunayyan said: “We are proud to be the world’s largest private company in desalinated water development and production, with the lowest levelised water cost, the largest plant, and the most innovative solutions.”

“We are pleased with the continuous progress on the project, which further expands our presence in Rabigh, which supplies water to the two holy cities. In the last month, during a record-breaking Hajj season, we have reliably supplied from our plants over two-thirds of the water demand in the holy sites,” he stated.

Among other developments, Acwa Power has signed an MoU with Japanese technology provider Toray Industries, to explore energy-saving technologies for seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) desalination plants.

The agreement was signed on the sidelines of the Saudi-Japan Investment Roundtable organised by the Ministry of Investment, said Acwa Power. Under this MoU, the two companies will engage in joint research to reduce the energy consumption associated with membranes used in Acwa Power’s desalination plants.

Acwa Power will share operational details of its plants with Toray, allowing the latter to analyse and provide commercially viable solutions to improve energy efficiency, it stated.