IDE Technologies, jointly owned (50:50) by The Israel Corporation Group subsidiary Israel Chemicals and the Delek Group, signed a contract to supply a desalination plant worth over a 100 million Euros to a major industrial client in Australia. The client will use the desalinated water for its industrial production processes.
Slated for completion during 2010, the new plant will be based on reverse osmosis technology - a modern process technology used for desalinating water in a wide range of applications. The plant will provide 140,000 cubic meters/day (50 million cubic meters/year) of high quality desalinated process and drinking water, using innovative technologies implemented by IDE in its projects worldwide, for example in the plants in Ashkelon and Hadera (over 100 million cubic meters/year each), Cyprus (20 million cubic meters /year) and in Eilat (3.6 million cubic meters/year).
This project is one of the most complex in the world and one of the largest of its kind supplied by IDE to a foreign client. The quality of the feed water necessitates more precise and complex treatment than in similar installations elsewhere and will be subject to the rigid and meticulous standards of the local industry.
Avshalom Felber, Chief Executive Officer of IDE, welcomed the signing, calling the deal "one of the most challenging the company has known, which places IDE in a key position for competing for similar projects in the future. It establishes IDE's presence on the Australian continent strengthens its worldwide deployment in line with the company's business strategy of global expansion and strengthens IDE's position as a world leader in the seawater desalination market."