France’s Credit Agricole and Japan’s Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC) have joined France’s Natixis on the lending group for Bahrain’s Muharraq wastewater treatment plant.

The three banks, along with export credit agency Export-Import Bank of Korea (Kexim), will provide debt financing of about $300m. Financial close is due to occur in February 2011.

The UK’s United Utilities and South Korea’s Samsung Engineering have been selected as preferred bidder and they have appointed Australia’s Macquarie as financial adviser (MEED 26:11:10).

The Samsung consortium was named preferred bidder in July, after bids were submitted in February. The project involves the construction of a 100,000 cubic metre a day (cm/d) wastewater treatment plant and a large deep-tunnel sewer and wastewater connection network.