Metito wins KAEC desal deal

King Abdullah Economic City (KAEC), the largest privately-funded new city in the world, has awarded a major contract to the Saudi unit of Metito, a leading UAE-based water management solutions provider, for the design and construction of a seawater desalination plant which will be powered by solar energy.

 The seawater treatment plant, to be built at a cost of SR220 million ($60 million), will have the capacity to produce 30,000 cu m of drinking water per day, and is expandable to 60,000 cu m per day, said the KAEC.

The new plant will be the second desalination plant in KAEC and it aimed at increasing the production capacity of drinking water to meet the needs of new projects and the growing population in the city, especially with the pilot operation of Al Haramain Express train, it stated.

 Metito will soon start work on the solar-powered desalination plant, which is due to be completed within two years. 

$293m projects on cards

The Saudi government has announced plans to spend SR1.1 billion ($293 million) on major infrastructure projects including the implementation of 16,000 sanitary drainage connections to homes across the kingdom, reported the Saudi Press Agency.

The ministry officials will start work on 20 major projects, which are aimed at benefiting about one million people. All these projects, including drainage schemes in Jeddah, will be completed within two years, the report stated.

30,000 rooms for Makkah, Riyadh

More than 300 hospitality properties are under construction in the Middle East, which, on completion, will add 105,037 rooms to the current supply. Of this, Makkah and Riyadh alone will boast nearly 30,000 rooms, according to the latest data on the Middle East and Africa (MEA) region released by industry monitor STR.

In the capital Riyadh, a total of 6,290 hotel rooms are now being built to complement the 13,104 rooms in inventory while in Makkah city about 23,307 are now in construction, which will add to the 32,377 rooms already in the market, it added.

In the other Gulf areas, current hotel projects in Dubai would add 36,394 rooms to the 97,736 rooms in supply while in Abu Dhabi about 4,064 rooms are now being constructed to boost the 26,678 rooms available, said the report.