The Kuwait Ministry of Electricity and Water (MEW) has received six bids for the contract to build the 50 million imperial gallon a day (MIGD) Doha desalination plant.

MEW received bids from the groups on 9 June. While pricing information is not yet available, the bidders are believed to include consortiums led by OTV (France), Degremont (France), Hyflux (Singapore) and Spain’s Acciona Agua.

The 50 MIGD reverse osmosis (RO) plant has been tendered as a standard engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract. Nine groups had been prequalified for the tender.

A second 50-MIGD phase of the Doha project is also planned.

The scheme is part of Kuwait’s efforts to expand its desalination capacity to cope with increasing demand from rapid population growth. The ministry forecasts that an additional 270 MIGD of desalination capacity is required to meet the estimated demand by 2020.