We are FCC Nº22

Saudi Arabia’s water management benchmark Aqualia has been working in the Middle East for more than a decade, having started its activity in 2011. In Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, the company developed a major project over five years to optimise the city’s water supply ne - twork, enabling it to offer a better service to more than three million inhabitants. In the same country, Aqualia is also currently managing the affected services of the capital’s metro works, also implemented by the FCC Group, and has operated and maintained the Hadda and Arana wastewater treatment plants in the city of Mecca, with half a million inhabi- tants served. At the beginning of 2020, Aqualia acquired 51% of the company HAAISCO (Haji Abdullah Alireza Integrated Services Ltd.) from the Saudi Arabian group Haji Abdullah Alireza, which is responsi- ble for the operation and maintenance of several desalination plants in Arabia. Among them is the King Abdulaziz International Airport plant, loca- ted north of Jeddah and a concession of the Qa- tarat company, of which Aqualia also acquired 51% in the same operation. These acquisitions marked the beginning of an alliance that in a short period of time produced significant successes such as the award in 2021 of the water supply to one of the main industrial complexes in Saudi Arabia, located in Jizan, in the southwest of the kingdom. In the same way, Aqualia operates and main- tains, through HAAISCO, two other desalina- tion plants in the country: the KAUST Universi- ty seawater reverse osmosis plant, located in Thuwal, which produces 52,250 m3 daily; and it also manages, for Aramco-Sumitomo, the MED (multi-effect distillation) desalination plant in Ra - bigh, with a daily production of 10,000 m 3 . water Desalination plant at King Abdulazis International Airpot in Jeddah (Saudi Arabia) B U S I N E S S 14 B U S I N E S S