National Shipping Company of Saudi Arabia (Bahri) expects three stations of its floating desalination project valued at a combined 760 million Saudi riyals ($203 million) to start commercial operations by mid-2024.

“The next year is a critical time for our floating desalination project as we enter the world’s largest desalination market [Saudi Arabia],” the shipping major said in its 2024 annual report.

The shipping major signed a contract with state-owned Saline Water Conversion Corporation (SWCC) in 2019 to build three floating stations that will supply and transfer desalinated water from the stations to desalination tanks for a period of 20 years. Each station will have a capacity of 50,000 cubic metres per day (m3/day), for a total capacity of 150,000 m3/ day.

Bahri started trial commissioning of the first barge in January 2022 with full commissioning slated for the fourth quarter of 2022. However, the company pushed the deadline to the second half of 2023 in March 2023.

The construction commenced in January 2020, with UAE’s water and wastewater project developer Metito, the engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contractor, delivering the first of the three floating desalination barges in January 2022.

Read More: Bahri wins Guinness World Record for largest mobile desalination plant

(Writing by D Madhura; Editing by Anoop Menon)

(anoop.menon@lseg.com)

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