Japan's Toray wins supply contract for Bahrain, UAE desal plants

Tokyo Stock Exchange-listed Toray Industries has secured orders for the supply of reverse osmosis (RO) membrane for Al Dur 2 Desalination Plant in Bahrain and Umm Al Quwain Desalination Plant in the UAE.

The combined water production capacity of the two plants will amass 911,000 m3/day. While the Umm Al Quwain Desalination Plant will alone have the world’s largest capacity of freshwater production with 681,000 m3/day.

The Al Dur 2 Desalination Plant has a total production capacity of 230,000m3/day and is expected to be operational by 2022, and so is the Umm Al Quwain Desalination Plant. SIDEM Veolia (France) is the engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contractor of both the desalination plants.

Based on the contract, Toray Membrane Middle East LLC (TMME), Toray’s local subsidiary in Dammam, Saudi Arabia will supply RO membranes and provide technical services to the plants.

As part of the contracts, Toray will focus on reinforcing localisation in its strategy, while it continues to solve water shortage issues in the Middle Eat through TMME.

While RO membrane is used in several fields from desalination, wastewater, to industrial application, Toray has reinforced RO membrane production capacity and technical support on a global scale over the years.

This will further contribute to resolving water issues by achieving the total accumulated water production of over 79,000,000 m3/day on RO membrane shipment basis, which is equivalent to providing water to 550 million people, or around 7% of world population.