Sorek SWRO desalination plant – Israel

Our involvement in the project:

Lenders Technical Adviser

The Sorek Desalination Facility project in Israel comprises the design, construction, supply, installation and long-term operations and maintenance of a seawater desalination facility which is capable of producing 150 million m3 per year of product water using water from the from the Mediterranean Sea as feed.

The desalination plant, based on the Seawater Reverse Osmosis (SWRO) process, has an installed capacity of 26,000 m3/hr and is one of the largest SWRO plants in the world. The plant includes all required equipment, materials, works, infrastructures and auxiliaries, such as its seawater supply intake and pre-treatment, reverse osmosis, post-RO water treatment, backwash sludge treatment, brine and discharge. The facility is designed to have a local independent power plant to provide lower cost energy to help towards already low water price being achieved at the plant today. Plant construction commenced in early 2011, with initial completion in late 2013 and final commissioning in early 2015. The new plant caters for 10% of Israel’s drinking water consumption and about 20% of its domestic water consumption.

The project consortium, Sorek Desalination Ltd (SDL) comprised IDE Technologies (51%) and Hutchison Water, a fully-owned subsidiary of Hutchison Group (49%). SDL secured some US$400m in project financing to help build and operate the plant, with members of the lender consortium including the European Investment Bank (EIB) with some US$185m, together with Bank Hapoalim and Bank Leumi.Battus acted as Lenders Technical Advisor during the tendering and construction phase.