ACWA Power announced an EPC contract for the Rabigh 4 project in Saudi Arabia on 14 July
ACWA announced the engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contract for the 600,000 m3/day Rabigh 4 Independent Water Plant (IWP) project with a consortium of Power China, SEPCOIII, and WETICO. This was done in tandem with the Haji Abdullah Alireza & Co (HAACO) and Al Moayyed Contracting Group (AMCG).
The Rabigh 4 IWP project, located in the kingdom's Western Province on the Red Sea coast, is estimated to cost US$677mn and will primarily service the Makkah and Madinah areas. The project's financial closure is planned in the third quarter of 2023. ACWA Power presently runs the Rabigh 3 IWP in the same location, the first private-sector desalination plant of that magnitude. With the addition of the Rabigh 4 IWP, ACWA Power's desalination capacity in the area will be doubled to 1.2 million m3/day and 6.8 million m3/day across its portfolio, making it the world's largest private producer of desalinated water.
The Saudi Water Partnership Company (SWPC) signed the project's Water Purchase Agreement (WPA) earlier this year after a consortium comprising ACWA Power, HAACO, and AMCG emerged as the preferred bidder.
"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, and I am thankful to all our colleagues who have spent time away from their families so that 2.5 million worshippers could safely perform their pilgrimage. Our presence in water desalination has already led key suppliers to localise their production in Saudi Arabia, and this project will create new employment opportunities during construction, as well as in operation and maintenance, where they will be largely staffed by young local talents from the local Electricity and Water Academy that we have developed over the last decade," said Mohammad Abunayyan, ACWA Power's chairman.
