FCC Aqualia, FCC's water management subsidiary, has been awarded the contract to build a desalination plant in Djerba, which is located in central Tunisia and is one of the country's main tourist enclaves. 

With this contract, worth 70 million euro, the company now operates in 18 countries. 

The project was awarded by Sonede, Tunisia's national water agency, and is being jointly financed by the German development bank, KfW, and the French Agency for Development, AFD. FCC Aqualia won the tender in a 50:50 joint venture with Inima, the Spanish subsidiary of Korean company GS.

The consortium will design, build, commission and operate the seawater desalination plant during the warranty period; the plant will have the capacity to produce 50,000 m3/day of drinking water, supplying the population of Djerba (about 150,000). 

The project also includes the seawater intake and brine discharge systems, a plant to remove iron from well water, a drinking water pumping station, and the supply and installation of 23.7 kilometres of mains to connect with the existing water grid. The plant will be expandable to 75,000 m3/day, and the marine and civil engineering works to cater for the future increase in capacity will be put in place at this stage. 

This contract enables FCC Aqualia, through its subsidiary aqualia infraestructuras, to strengthen its footprint in North Africa, where it has built water treatment plants in Algeria and Egypt. This is the company's first contract in Tunisia, a country which is planning to build water treatment plants in other major cities.  

About FCC Aqualia

FCC Aqualia is the water management subsidiary of FCC, one of Europe's leading citizen services companies. It is the third-largest water company in Europe and the sixth-largest in the world, according to the most recent ranking by Global Water Intelligence magazine, and serves 23.5 million people.

The company currently operates in 1,100 cities in 18 countries: Spain, Italy, Portugal, Czech Republic, Poland, Romania, Montenegro, Bosnia, Mexico, Peru, Chile, Uruguay, Algeria, Egypt, UAE, Saudi Arabia, China and (now) Tunisia. In 2013, the company obtained revenues of 950 million euro and had a backlog of over 14 billion euro.