Water

SUEZ Joins French President’s Business Delegation to China: Launches New Contract with Local Partners to support China’s Ecological Transition

SUEZ was part of the French business delegation that accompanied President Emmanuel Macron on his state visit to China, from 5 to 7 April. This visit will further strengthen ties between France and China, creating more opportunities for collaboration between the two countries. During this visit, witnessed by Ministers of both countries at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, SUEZ and its Chinese partners, Wanhua Chemical Group (Wanhua) and China Railway Shanghai Engineering Bureau Group (CRSH), signed a cooperation agreement for a seawater desalination project that will further expand their cooperation in the environmental sector, at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

SUEZ and Wanhua, which is a global top 25 chemical company, worked together on four major water and wastewater treatment projects from 2017 to 2022. For the new desalination project in Penglai District, Yantai City, Shandong Province, SUEZ will design and build, for Wanhua, a 100 MLD seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) desalination plant with the highest industrial standards. 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. China Railway is a Fortune 500 company. While saving scarce freshwater resources, the project will increase the resilience of the local water ecosystem and enable Wanhua and its industrial partners to achieve ecological transformation.

SUEZ has 50 years of know-how in seawater desalination, having built one of the world’s largest SWRO desalination plant in Australia (Victorian Desalination Plant). It subsequently accelerated the pace of expansion and cemented its position as the category leader in the Southern Hemisphere, after the development in 2006 of the desalination plant in Perth providing more than 45 billion liters of clean drinking water to over two million people per year. In China, the Penglai project in Yantai, Shandong Province, is SUEZ’s largest seawater desalination project in the industrial sector worldwide and its first such project in China. This marks a breakthrough for SUEZ in the Chinese desalination market and a new step in its development strategy for China.

The new 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 towards sustainable development. It also speaks to the parties’ commitment to working together to drive China’s ecological transformation and to contribute to the shared vision of France and China.

Witnessed by Ministers of both countries, SUEZ and its Chinese partners, Wanhua Chemical Group and China Railway Shanghai Engineering Bureau Group, signed a cooperation agreement for a seawater desalination project.

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