PAKISTAN –  The China Pak Investment Corporation is set to build a new seawater desalination project in Pakistan.^[1]  The project will be located in Gwadar and produce 23,000 cubic metres of water per day for a community of 500,000 Chinese professionals who will move to the city by 2020.   

The facility is part of a much larger development project that comprises homes, parks, shopping and sports facilities, and an international school for children. It advances China’s plan of foreign direct investment known as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor programme.^[2] 

MARSHALL ISLANDS – Osmoflo’s desalination project at Ebeye Island went online last week.^[3]   The project consists of two seawater reverse osmosis plants which will supply a total of 1,600 cubic metres of water per day for the local population.

Osmoflo designed and assembled the plants in Australia before transporting them to Ebeye, where it will provide operations and maintenance services for two years. Kwajalein Atoll Joint Utilities, a local utility that provides Ebeye and several other island communities with water services owns the plants.^[4]  

CHILE –  A consortium consisting of Spain’s GS Inima and Chile’s Claro Vicuna Valenzuela have won a $73 million-dollar contract to build a new desalination facility in Chile.^[5]  The plant will be located in the driest non-polar region of the world, the Atacama Desert, which covers an immense stretch of land near the Pacific, between the Andean Mountains and the Chilean Coastal Range.

The facility will supply a maximum capacity of 104,000 cubic metres of water per day for 70 percent of the residents in the Atacama region and is scheduled to go online by early 2020.^[6]

^{Los Flamencos National Reserve in the Atacama Desert    Credit: Michael Stolp-Smith/Alto Atacama Desert Lodge & Spa}

^{The honeycomb shapes of Chile’s largest salt flat, Salar de Atacama, with the Andes in the distance Credit: Michael Stolp-Smith/Alto Atacama Desert Lodge & Spa}

FCC Aqualia has won a €4 million contract to operate the Burgos wastewater treatment plant in northwestern SPAIN.^[7]   The company was selected over two other competing bids for the four-year contract, which includes a possible two-year extension.

The Burgos plant will provide 156,000 cubic metres of water per day to serve a population of one million people as well as the local agricultural industry.^[8]

SAUDI ARABIA’s Saline Water Conversion Corporation will build a reverse osmosis plant in the country in partnership with Japan’s New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization.^[9]  The project will include the cooperation of companies that have worked on Japan’s Mega-ton Water Project, a national research and development program devoted to energy-efficient seawater desalination and wastewater reclamation projects.^[10]