The financing agreements were signed by Ousmane Fall, director of the AfDB’s Industrialization and Trade Development Department, and Karim Lotfi Senhadji, chief financial officer of the OCP Group, the Bank said in a statement.
The first loan of $150 million from AfDB resources, and the second loan of $18 million from the Canada-African Development Bank Climate Fund (CACF), will be used to finance the construction of three modular seawater desalination plants, according to the same source, noting that these OCP Group plants will have a total annual capacity of 110 million m3.
In addition to making the OCP Group’s industrial and mining sites self-sufficient in non-conventional water, the project will supply up to 75 million m3 of drinking water to the cities of Safi, El Jadida and the areas surrounding OCP’s Safi and Jorf plants, the ADB pointed out, adding that more than 1.5 million people will benefit from this drinking water.
The third loan, for $20 million from the Clean Technology Fund (CTF), will be used to finance systems for storing energy generated by renewable sources. These systems will supply energy to desalination plants and other production units of the OCP Group.
