Clean Drinking Water from the Nile for the Cities of Suez and Port Said 

VA TECH WABAG (Austria) is pleased to announce its receipt in rapid succession of two new orders from Egypt. Just prior to the beginning of this year, the Vienna-based company was able to book a contract for a new drinking water treatment plant for the city in Suez. This has now been followed by the signing of an agreement in April for the El Raswa project in Port Said. The two plants will use water from the Nile to produce 155,000 m3/d of clean drinking water for roughly 800,000 inhabitants. The customer in the case of both orders is the state-owned Suez Canal Authority (SCA).

The waters of the Nile represent Egypt’s most important source of fresh water. The vast majority of the population obtains its drinking water from the river, but this can only be consumed without a health risk following the appropriate treatment.

At present, the city of Suez has three drinking water treatment plants, but their current capacity is no longer sufficient to meet the needs of a rapidly growing population. Therefore, the Suez Canal Authority has decided to build an additional plant and has commissioned WABAG with its design and construction. A standard, multi-stage treatment system is to be employed, which will free the Nile waters of solids such as sand and mud, as well as organic impurities, bacteria and parasites. The plant will have a capacity of 75,000 m3/d.

WABAG will be responsible for the design and engineering, supply, completion and start-up of the new plant, as well as the demolition of existing structures. Commissioning will commence in 2016.

The current El Raswa order in Port Said also involves a plant for the treatment of Nile water. Here, too, a conventional, multi-stage system consisting of sedimentation, filtration and disinfection is to be used.  This will allow the production of 80,000m3 of drinking water daily for the supply of 400,000 people. Start-up is scheduled for spring 2017.

WABAG obtained both orders in the course of public tendering and in the face of fierce, international competition. The company’s order intake from Egypt in the past twelve months amounts to around EUR 30 million having commenced with the receipt of a contract for the Madinaty wastewater treatment plant in the summer of 2013. This plant will furnish Cairo’s new satellite city with a system that allows sustainable water reuse.   

WABAG has been active in Egypt for many years and has already completed a total of twenty water and wastewater plants. The company is very familiar with the treatment of Nile water having built the first El Raswa plant in Port Said in 2007 and a further facility in the eastern Nile delta in 2009. These plants provide the safe drinking water supply of roughly one million people.