The UAE’s Metito has been awarded a SR220m ($58.7m) contract to build a desalination plant at the King Abdullah Economic City (KAEC) on the Red Sea Coast of Saudi Arabia.

The plant will have a capacity of 30,000 cubic metres a day (cm/d), but will be expandable to 60,000 cm/d. Construction work on the plant will take 24 months to complete, with water production scheduled to start in the first quarter of 2020.

The plant will be the second desalination plant in KAEC, and will provide water to meet the needs of new projects and growing population in the new city.

The desalination plant is planned to be powered by solar energy from a planned solar plant at the city.

KAEC is being developed over a land area of 181 square kilometres on the Red Sea coast, about 100km north of Jeddah. The project is being developed by Emaar, the Economic City, a publicly-listed Saudi joint-stock company.