A new seawater desalination plant will soon break ground in Egypt’s Suez Canal Economic Zone (SCzone). The project was announced on its website at the end of February 2024, along with a future partnership with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).
According to the SCzone press release, the desalination project will be implemented in several phases. The expected daily capacity of the future facility is 250,000 m3. “It should be noted that preparations are underway with a view to launching a global call for tenders for the first phase of the work”, says the Egyptian industrial and commercial centre, located on the main trade route between Europe and South Asia.
Clearly, the SCzone will have to go through several stages before its new seawater desalination plant is commissioned.
Towards water autonomy for the SCzone?
This infrastructure should improve the supply of drinking and irrigation water from desalination in the world-class economic zone, which covers an area of 461 km2 along the banks of the Suez Canal and is not immune to drought. The zone, created in 2015, is home to six ports and four development zones in various sectors, including mobility, agriculture, energy, health and more.
The station due to break ground shortly in the land of the pharaohs will not be the first to be set up in the SCzone. It will support existing facilities, some of which serve industry. This is particularly true of the three plants inaugurated in 2019 by President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi in the Ain Sokhna port area.
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The first, with a capacity of 36,000 m3 per day, is located in the Phosphate and Compound Fertiliser Complex; the second, with a capacity of 100,000 m3 per day, supplies the Economic Zone General Authority; and the third is a seawater desalination complex with a capacity of 512,000 m3 per day. The SCzone’s ambition is to achieve water autonomy.
Inès Magoum