The new Suez group announced on Tuesday that it had won its first seawater desalination project for an industrial client, a plant that will produce up to 100 million liters of water per day in China for a chemical giant. Construction should start within a year and take about 20 months. “To preserve limited freshwater resources,” the plant will supply Penglai (eastern Shandong province) to the site of Wanhua Chemical, a top 25 group in the global chemical industry.
The contract, won with local Chinese partners, includes engineering, procurement and construction. In particular, it will supply the power plant adjacent to the industrial park. No amount was disclosed.
Four previous projects with Wanhua Chemical
The Suez group, created on February 1, 2022 from activities carried out by a Veolia takeover bid, already operates desalination plants for cities in Australia. In particular Melbourne’s which produces up to 150 billion liters a year, according to Suez, one of the world’s largest sites using reverse osmosis technology. Also in Australia, Suez built the seawater desalination plant in Perth, which provides more than 2 million people with more than 45 billion liters of drinking water each year.
Beijing, for its part, has recently published a plan to boost the large-scale use of desalination, with industrial parks at the center of its strategy. Suez had already implemented four major water and wastewater treatment projects with Wanhua Chemical between 2017 and 2022.
This new contract “marks Suez’s breakthrough in the desalination market in China, as well as a new stage in our development in this country,” Suez CEO Sabrina Soussan said on Tuesday, referring to “50 years of experience of the group in terms of desalination”.
Source: BFM TV
