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QatarEnergy has announced the signing of a tripartite memorandum of understanding (MoU) between its subsidiary Mesaieed Petrochemical Holding Company (MPHC), Qatar Industrial Manufacturing Company (QIMC) and Turkiye’s Atlas Yatirim Planlama to create a new company called Qatar Salt Products Company (QSalt).

MPHC will be the largest shareholder in QSalt with a 40% stake, while QIMC and Atlas Yatirim Planlama will hold a 30% stake each, QatarEnergy said in a statement on 23 September.

Separately, QSalt will build a salt production plant in the Um Al-Houl area in Qatar at an estimated cost of $275m. 

QatarEnergy subsidiary Qatar Petrochemical Company (Qapco) and MPHC subsidiary Qatar Vinyl Company (QVC) will operate the facility.

Qapco is an 80:20 joint venture of Industries Qatar and France’s TotalEnergies. QatarEnergy, in turn, owns the majority 51% stake in Industries Qatar.

MPHC, in which QatarEnergy holds the majority, 57.85% stake, owns a 55.2% stake in QVC.

The new plant in Um Al-Houl will produce industrial salts essential for the petrochemical industry, along with bromine, potassium chlorides and demineralised water, which will be produced at a later stage, “contributing to product diversification and economic growth”, QatarEnergy said.

The plant will have a production capacity of 1 million tonnes a year, and will “significantly reduce Qatar’s reliance on imported raw materials, addressing the current import of approximately 850,000 tonnes [a year] of table and industrial salts annually”.

This facility will utilise wastewater from reverse osmosis (RO) desalination units, transforming waste from desalination processes into a valuable resource.

QSalt, the new joint venture company, and the planned industrial salts project will receive support from QatarEnergy’s Tawteen localisation programme, the state energy enterprise said.

The MoU signing ceremony in Doha was attended by Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi, Qatar’s minister of state for energy affairs and president and CEO of QatarEnergy, along with other senior executives from QatarEnergy and the stakeholding companies.