The construction of two seawater desalination plants in Kenya’s coastal county of Mombasa is finally set to begin, after the county authority awarded Almar Water Solutions and Aqua Swiss the construction contracts.
The two Spain and Swiss based companies were finally selected to build two desalination plants following a call for tenders launched in 2016.
The construction of the plants has been in the pipeline for many months.
In May 2018, Pumps Africa highlighted that Spain’s Almar Water Solutions had pre-qualified for a design, build, operate, transfer (DBOT) of the projects in Mombasa County.
According to Carlos Cosín, the company’s CEO, Almar Water Solutions will build a desalination plant with a capacity of 100,000 m3 per day on the island of Mombasa and the amount of water produced by the plant will supply one million people.
Another desalination plant with a capacity of 30,000 m3 of water per day will be built in Likoni, undertaken by Aqua Swiss.
The construction of the two desalination plants – estimated to cost nearly $157 million – is scheduled to start in June 2019 and expected to be completed in 2021.