Almar Water Solutions, headquartered in Madrid, has announced that it has been awarded a contract to develop Kenya’s first large-scale desalination plant. The project will be located in the North Mainland zone in the county of Mombasa and will have a capacity of 100,000 cubic meters per day, supplying drinking water to over a million people. The plant will be managed and operated for 25 years until it is handed over.

AquaSwiss AG has also won a contract to design, build, operate and transfer a seawater desalination plant in Mombasa. Located in the Likoni region, the plant will utilise reverse osmosis technology and have capacity to treat 30,000 m³ of water per day. The estimated construction cost is US$48 million. In return, AquaSwiss will receive the proceedings from the sale of the drinking water produced by the plant at a fixed price over the 25-year concession period. The plant will be operational by 2020.

The development of these desalination projects will alleviate the water crisis that Mombasa County is currently experiencing, which for several years has caused interruptions in the drinking water supply.