Saudi’s Saline Water Conversion Corporation (SWCC) has signed a joint development agreement with Khobar-based Speciality Industrial Chemical Company (SICCo) to extract minerals and build a bromine production system using the brine waste stream of reverse osmosis desalination plants.

SICCo is a specialist producer of Clean Brine Fluids for the oil and gas industry.

The agreement was signed on the side lines of Future Minerals Forum 2023 in Riyadh, according to a tweet by SWCC on Wednesday.

The tweet didn’t give more details but in November 2022, SWCC had announced that it had signed agreements with local and international firms for projects to convert brine into useful industrial chemicals and salts.

"We're producing 6 million cubic meters of water a day. If we extract minerals from it, we'll be able to secure future demand," SWCC Governor Abdullah Al-Abdul Karim was quoted as saying in a tweet by the Forum.

(Writing by D Madhura; Editing by Bhaskar Raj)

(anoop.menon@lseg.com)