The Utilities Development Company (UDC) epitomises the Kuwaiti private sector's ability to carry out and manage large projects.

The limited liability company was founded in 2001 to implement the concession contract of the Sulaibiya wastewater treatment and reclamation plant, on a build-operate-transfer (BOT) basis.
The involvement of the company with this prestigious project started in 1998 when its shareholders were prequalified for participation as a consortium to submit a bid for the Sulaibiya project. UDC is a member of the Mohammed Abdulmohsin  Al Kharafi Group which owns 75 percent of its shares, the remaining shares being owned by the US company Ionics, the leading company in membrane technology.
The project is the largest wastewater treatment and reclamation project in the world using both ultra-filtration and reverse osmosis technologies.

Nasser Al Kharafi, president of Mohammed Abdulmohsin Al Kharafi Group of Companies and chairman of the board of directors of UDC, emphasises that the future focus will be on privatisation and that the Sulaibiya project has opened the door for the private sector to undertake large infrastructure projects, thereby reducing the burden on the governments to commit the substantial investments normally required for such projects.
He adds that the project marks the start for other similar projects in the region, through which problems resulting from the scarcity of water resources will also be effectively addressed by saving the high costs of desalination plants.

Mohammed Abdulmohsin Al Kharafi Group is active in a range of sectors in 26 countries and was one of the first companies to embark on BOT projects in the early 1990s upon the emergence of privatisation.
Since then, the group has won a number of projects and executed them as BOT projects, including Marsa Alam International Airport in Egypt which was commissioned in October 2001, the car park project at Beirut International Airport (Lebanon), which was commissioned in April 1999 and Port Ghaleb project in Egypt, which has been under construction since 2000.

Al Kharafi Group's contracting sector has, throughout its long history, executed around 60 per cent of the sanitary network in Kuwait. It is currently involved in a massive project to build a modern sanitary network for Kuwait city and its suburbs using a tunnel system. Its work also includes the main pumping station A7 at Shuwaikh.
Ionics, is a reverse osmosis pioneer, has a long history of designing, executing, operating and managing water purification plants by using the RO technique. It is currently operating and managing more than 100 water purification plants around the world through several associated companies. The company says it has also supplied or built the more than 3,000 desalination plants - making it the largest supplier of these plants worldwide.

Ionics' shares have been traded in the New York Stock Exchange since 1955. It is one of the few US companies whose foreign operations account for a major part of its revenues, for its annual revenues from foreign operations are estimated at more than 40 per cent of the total annual revenues.
The National Company For Mechanical and Electrical Works (Kharafi National), which will operate and maintain the Sulaibiya plant, is also a member of the Kharafi Group of companies and has an extensive experience in this field as it has _during the last 10 years _ operated all the wastewater treatment plants of Kuwait's Ministry of Public Works as well as lifting stations, pumping stations and control centres.