SUEZ officially signs its first contract for the construction of an industrial water desalination plant as part of President macron’s official visit to China

As part of President Emmanuel Macron's official visit to China from 5 to 7 April 2023, SUEZ and its Chinese partners, Wanhua Chemical Group (Wanhua) and China Railway Shanghai Engineering Bureau Group (CRSH), officially signed a cooperation agreement for a seawater desalination project for industrial application.

SUEZ will design and build a 100 MLD (million litre/day) seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) desalination plant, in Penglai District, Yantai City, Shandong Province. The plant, complying with the highest industrial standards, is designed to use seawater as a complementary water source for the chemical industrial complex. The project builds on the partners’ proven track record of success, and leverages the strong engineering construction capabilities of CRSH, a wholly owned subsidiary of China Railway Company Limited. While saving freshwater resources, the project will increase the resilience of the local water ecosystem and support Wanhua and its industrial partners in their ecological transformation. On its completion, the desalination plant will save over 36 million m3 of fresh water per year.

SUEZ has established itself as a major global player in the creation of circular solutions for water, with the development of the Melbourne desalination plant in Australia, one of the largest reverse osmosis desalination plants in the world. Also in Australia, SUEZ is behind the Perth seawater desalination plant, which provides over 2 million people with more than 45 billion litres of drinking water each year.

The Penglai project is SUEZ’s largest seawater desalination project in the industrial sector worldwide, and its first such project in China.

This project broadens SUEZ’s scope of cooperation with Wanhua and CRSH and furthers the ambition of the three partners to build a green industrial ecosystem to achieve more sustainable development. It also bears testament to the parties’ commitment to working together to drive China’s ecological transformation, in line with the shared vision of France and China. SUEZ and Wanhua, a global chemical industry leader, worked together on four major water and wastewater treatment projects between 2017 and 2022.

I am thrilled to collaborate with Wanhua and CRSH on our Shandong project and to turn it into a new standard of excellence in environmental cooperation between France and China. SUEZ has a long track record in desalination, which is a solution for the future to secure a stable supply of water in regions affected by water stress.

Sabrina Soussan , Chairman and CEO of SUEZ

LIAO Zengtai, Chairman of Wanhua Chemical Group, said: “I am very encouraged by the remarkable success of our cooperation with SUEZ to date. SUEZ is a great company whose expertise and excellent services have supported us to achieve strong results in many areas. I expect this desalination project to become another benchmark and headline project.”

WANG Jianying, Chairman of China Railway Shanghai Engineering Bureau Group, said: “Today we are proud to see our tripartite cooperation deepen. Like Wanhua, we look forward to continuing our sincere, close, extensive and long-term partnership with SUEZ to achieve more outstanding results in areas such as infrastructure and environmental protection. We are confident that our cooperation will deliver greater benefits to society!”

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