Egypt proceeds with wastewater work

18 June 2025

 

Egypt’s Ministry of Housing, Utilities & Urban Communities, through the Construction Authority for Potable Water & Wastewater, has announced a general procurement notice for the fourth-phase design-build expansion of the giant Abu Rawash wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) in Giza.

No official timeline has been given by the client for the issue of the request for proposals (RFP) for the project, but the tentative date for construction start is January 2026, with completion scheduled for June 2030.

The scheme has an official budget allocation of about €136m ($157m) and involves expanding the existing 1.6 million cubic-metre-a-day (cm/d) Abu Rawash plant with a further 400,000 cm/d of treatment capacity. 

The additional capacity will be treated up to secondary treatment, with the treated wastewater discharged into the Barakat drainage system and then onto the Nile before entering the Mediterranean. By doing so, the irrigated land area will increase by about 29,000 acres, benefitting some 2 million people. 

Abu Rawash is one of the world’s largest wastewater treatment complexes. Its 400,000 cm/d first phase was built in 1992. It was followed by phase 2 with a total capacity of 800,000 cm/d of primary-level treatment in 2010, before being upgraded to secondary treatment and expanded by 400,000 cm/d in 2022. 

The latest expansion is being funded to the tune of €50m by the African Development Bank, with the remainder financed by the state.

In late May, a grouping of the local Hassan Allam Construction and UAE-headquartered Metito won an estimated $200m contract to upgrade and expand the Alexandria West WWTP

Egypt is home to the world’s largest WWTP, the 7.5 million cm/d New Delta Irrigation plant completed in 2023, as well as the 5 million cm/d Bahr El-Baqr facility commissioned two years earlier.  


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Edward James
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