Acciona wins its first Moroccan water contract

The project will improve the water supply for Morocco’s Rabat-Casablanca region.

The consortium will Design, Build, and Commission the drinking water treatment plant, which has a capacity of 5m³/second. Client for the scheme is Morocco's Office National Electricity & Eau Potable (ONEE).

The project is part of an overall plan aimed at improving the fresh water supply along the Rabat-Casablanca coastline. The new DWTP will be located in the municipality of Oum Azza, some 30km from Morocco's capital, Rabat. It is intended to improve the fresh water supply in an area with five million inhabitants and which has the country's highest population growth.

Construction is expected to take 27 months to complete. The new water treatment plant will help meet the region's water demand until the year 2030.

With the new plant, the Bouregreg complex, which delivers fresh water to the country's Atlantic seaboard, will have a total production capacity of 14m³/second, making it one of the world's biggest freshwater production centers. The Bouregreg complex project is being financed by the African Development Bank at a total cost of €250m.

The Oum Azza plant is Acciona Agua's first water contract on Morocco, and the second major contract on the African continent. The Company was responsible for building a desalination plant in Fouka, Algiers, which became fully operational in late July 2012 and produces 120,000m³ of freshwater a day

This is also Acciona's second contract in Morocco. In late September, the Company announced that it would build and commission one of Africa's largest concentrating solar plants, in the Sahara. The CSP complex is located near the city of Ouarzazate, on the edge of the Sahara Desert and in the foothills of the Atlas mountain range. The 160MW facility will require an investment of €500m.

Got a story? Email news@theconstructionindex.co.uk