By John — Desalination News
Egypt’s Ministry of Housing, Utilities and Urban Communities has signed a package of operation and maintenance (O&M) contracts covering 11 seawater desalination plants, handing day-to-day running of facilities with a combined design capacity of 485,000 cubic metres a day to six private-sector companies. The deals, worth roughly EGP 4.6 billion (about $94 million) in total, were announced this week and mark one of the largest single O&M awards yet under Egypt’s push to diversify its water supply away from the Nile.
The 11 plants span three regions. In North and South Sinai, seven plants with a combined 240,000 cubic metres a day are covered, including a 100,000-cubic-metre-a-day facility at Kilo 17 west of Arish, a combined 65,000 cubic metres a day across plants at Ras Sidr, Abu Zenima and New Nuweiba, a further 45,000 cubic metres a day split between El-Tor and New Dahab, and a 30,000-cubic-metre-a-day plant at the resort town of Sharm El-Sheikh. In Matrouh, on the Mediterranean coast, three plants totalling 165,000 cubic metres a day are included: the 40,000-cubic-metre-a-day Dabaa plant, the 65,000-cubic-metre-a-day Rumaila 4 facility, and a combined 60,000 cubic metres a day across the Rumaila 1, 2 and 3 complex. On the Red Sea coast, the 80,000-cubic-metre-a-day Yusr plant rounds out the package.
Six companies were awarded contracts across the 11 sites: Egypt Maintenance Company (San Misr), Proserv, Orascom Construction, a Metito-Orascom partnership, Contrac for Services Management, and Elsewedy Utilities. The last of those, the facilities-management arm of industrial conglomerate Elsewedy Electric, picked up the O&M contract for the Dabaa plant specifically — a smaller, already-operating 40,000-cubic-metre-a-day facility that this publication covered on its own terms two weeks ago, when Elsewedy Utilities first secured a three-year contract for it. This week’s announcement folds that earlier award into a much larger, ministry-wide signing ceremony covering ten additional plants across Sinai and the Red Sea.
Ahmed Omran, Deputy Minister of Housing for Utilities, and Mostafa El-Shemy, chairperson of the Holding Company for Drinking Water and Wastewater, attended the signing. El-Shemy described the contracts as “an important step towards improving the management of assets,” and said the goal is to shift plant upkeep from reactive repairs toward preventive maintenance and advance planning, with private operators strengthening rather than replacing the state subsidiaries’ oversight role. Omran said that as Egypt expands desalination capacity, that growth has to be matched by “continuous improvements in operations and maintenance” if the investment is going to pay off in reliable water supply.
The contracts carry an average annual cost of around EGP 1.2 billion and will be monitored against operational efficiency, water quality, technical readiness, energy consumption and compliance with preventive-maintenance schedules, according to the ministry’s statement.
The signing reflects a deliberate, years-long Egyptian strategy of transferring plant operations to specialised private contractors rather than running them directly through state utilities — a pattern seen elsewhere in the sector as governments lean on operators with dedicated technical expertise to keep a rapidly growing fleet of plants running efficiently. Egypt now has roughly 129 desalination plants with a combined capacity of about 1.4 million cubic metres a day, with another 19 plants totalling 687,000 cubic metres a day under construction. Housing Minister Randa El-Menshawy has set a long-term target of nearly 10 million cubic metres a day of desalination capacity by 2050, as the country works to close an annual water deficit of around 7 billion cubic metres driven by population growth and the Nile’s strained flow.
What happens next will be a test of execution rather than construction: whether the new private operators can meaningfully cut breakdowns and downtime across a fleet of plants spread from the Sinai desert to the Red Sea coast, and whether the model proves durable enough for Egypt to lean on again as it works toward its 2050 capacity target.
(Source: Daily News Egypt)