METITO, a leader and provider of choice for total intelligent water management solutions in the emerging markets with operations covering three business areas: design and build, specialty chemicals, and utilities, will be spearheading the King Abdullah Economic City seawater desalination mega plant partially powered by solar energy and in this context and the company’s growing strengths Saudi Gazette met with Fadi Juez, managing director Metito.

He stated that, “With 60 years of experience, the group provides customized, comprehensive and advanced solutions across the full spectrum of its industry; from clean to dirty water; desalination and re-use; industrial solutions (up to hyper pure water); investing into water and wastewater assets; and structuring both Greenfield and Brownfield schemes under project finance structures.

“We have an impressive project portfolio that includes more than 3,000 projects in more than 46 countries worldwide and over 2500 experienced, and highly qualified, employees. Most recently Metito has spearheaded some iconic projects in Africa and the GCC including: the first Bulk Surface Water Supply Facility in Sub Saharan Africa, through public-private partnership, allowing the off-taker, Water and Sanitation Corporation, to secure potable water needs for Kigali and other towns; and King Abdullah Economic City seawater desalination mega plant partially powered by solar energy; Al Yosr, the largest desalination plant in Egypt serving potable water to over 500,000 residents; the treated sewage effluent, recycling and reuse wastewater plant to produce feed water for district cooling to serve Burj Khalifa and makeup water for the world's largest choreographed fountain, the Dubai Fountain.

SG: What are the most important areas of the company's operations and projects in these areas?

FJ: Metito has three main areas of operation — the Design and Build’ arm of the Metito Group specializes in custom design and manufacturing of water treatment, wastewater treatment and desalination plants/systems. Metito’s Utilities business provides full-service water supply and wastewater treatment under build-own-operate, build-operate-transfer, build-own-operate-transfer, takeover-operate-transfer full concession business models, and the long-term O&M contracts. The third core area of operations is Metito’s Technology division, which develops and invests in the latest technological advances in water management. In the GCC we see desalination, water recycling and reuse as the most important areas of focus for the water and wastewater industry. We see great potential.

SG: What are the latest technologies that you provide to your projects?

FJ: Advances in science and technology are helping to bridge the gap between supply and demand and drive the industry forward. Examples of such technologies that are gaining traction are ‘all in-pipe’ biological water treatment solutions such as ‘Biopipe’ through which you can recycle wastewater without creating any waste by-products, making the water completely safe for use in organic farming or discharging into rivers or sea. Biopipe is also vastly scalable with the ability to treat the wastewater generated by individual houses or cities of millions of people just as efficiently.

As the need to secure water resources, utilities and sustainable supply become more and more important real-time water contamination detection and quality monitoring becomes an imperative. An example of a new solution that Metito offers exclusively to its clients and which addresses this need is ‘Optiqua’. This is a patented ‘refractive index (RI) sensor’ which can monitor the quality of drinking water and detect the full spectrum of contaminants in water infrastructure networks and feedback that information in real time. Taking quick and timely action to address any contamination — not only set parameters — is a critical need that need not be underestimated for any water utility provider.

We are also seeing development of systems that enable cities around the world become smarter in handling wastewater. The ‘root enhanced bioreactor’ system is a good example. These systems are integrated smart facilities combining water treatment/reuse with energy & resource recovery and biological manufacturing- like microchips in a computer.

SG: Has technology had an impact on reducing the cost of desalination and water treatment?

FJ: Absolutely we use the latest technologies for example biopipe mentioned earlier or Reverse Osmosis (RO) technology to safely recycle wastewater on-site and to reuse it efficiently as a readily available water resource rather than disposing of it and incurring higher costs. The technology pertaining to integrating new sustainable energy sources to power desalination projects — such as that in KAEC and Metito’s latest project — is also a great deal and can reduce the cost of energy and the overall cost of the project.

SG: The vision of the water desalination sector in the Kingdom is to be part of the ambitious Vision 2030 to what extent?

FJ: Water desalination will always be part of the solution to the Kingdom’s water needs at least for the short to medium term. That said, Vision 2030 takes on a holistic approach to secure more sustainable solutions that aim to enhance efficiency of production whilst reducing power usage and wastage to a minimum throughout the water infrastructure networks. Those solutions that will see the most success will be scalable, low cost, ecologically friendly, easily installed or retrofitted to existing infrastructure and easy to maintain. This can keep water wastages or loss to a minimum.

SG: Can you highlight your views on the contract signed between Metito and King Abdullah Economic City?

FJ: King Abdullah Economic City (KAEC) has signed a contract with Metito Saudi Ltd (Metito) for the design and construction of a seawater desalination plant powered by solar energy and valued at SR220,404,144. The seawater treatment and desalination plant will start with the capacity to produce 30,000 cubic meters of drinking water per day, and expandable to 60,000 cubic meters per day. The development period of the project is 24 months, with a plan to start production in the first quarter of the year 2020. The new plant will be the second desalination plant in KAEC with an objective to increase 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.

SG: Your views on securing sustainable resources for safe water in the Kingdom?

FJ: As mentioned earlier, we are working on the KAEC project — very iconic one. Also Metito is working on other very important projects such as: Al Quwaiyah STP, Sharma: 20,000 SWRO, Madinat Hajj STP, Modon Industrial STP, Hail University STP, Dirab Pumping Station, Abu Ali Camp HBWRO ... just to name a few

SG: What are the future plans for Metito in Saudi Arabia?

FJ: Metito has a long history in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia that goes back over 30 years. Today, The Kingdom remains to hold a special place in our plans and Metito remains committed to playing an active role in developing the water and wastewater sector. Metito has a growing portfolio of important projects currently underway across a diverse range of sectors including construction, oil & gas, naval, telecoms, industrial and housing sectors. We are working with some of the biggest names in the market and honored to be delivering world-class quality projects and solutions to new and recurrent partners. Our plan is to keep growing and to continue adding shared value to The Kingdom, our clients and to the bigger community. Example, in the near future we will be establishing a new speciality chemicals factory in KSA — great opportunities we are confident this establishment will create.