South Korea’s Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction has signed an estimated KD117.3m ($388m) contract to build a new reverse osmosis desalination plant in the Doha area of Kuwait.

MEED reported in August 2015 that Kuwait’s Central Tenders Committee had approved the award of the deal to the firm. The signing of the contract took place on 31 May.

The Doha phase one facility will have a desalination capacity of 50 million imperial gallons a day (MIGD). Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction is aiming to finish the work by November 2018.

The firm’s winning bid was almost 10 per cent higher than the KD105.8m price submitted by the low bidder, a consortium of Spain’s Abeinsa and the local Gharnata International General Trading & Contracting. The Ministry of Electricity & Water (MEW), the project owner, received bids from six groups on 9 June 2015 for the engineering, procurement and construction contract.

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