Hyflux sees Dahej desalination funding ‘within year’

Hyflux has extended the time it foresees for financial closure on its Dahej seawater desalination plant in India to “within this year”.

In February, the Singapore desalination contractor and manufacturer said that it was aiming at financial close in the second quarter of 2014.

Hyflux is in a consortium with Hitachi to build the 336,000 m³/d Dahej desalination plant. Hitachi concluded a water purchase agreement in January 2013 with Dahej SEZ Ltd, the management company of the Dahej Special Economic Zone, for water from its proposed desalination plant in the zone.

In a statement released with the company’s first quarter results on 8 April 2014, Hyflux said that the group anticipated a slow year ahead due to “timing of project commencement and the delay in the operational readiness of the national power grid connected to our Tuaspring plant” (Singapore’s second seawater desalination plant, which went online in September 2013). No date was given for the start of the Dahej plant.

In its statement, Hyflux also said that the group was “actively pursuing” prospective projects in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, and on delivering a “suite of membrane products and systems for new applications for the industrial and municipal sectors.”