RIYADH: Saudi Arabia’s progress in the desalination industry has received worldwide recognition, with the UK-based Global Water Intelligence recognizing the Kingdom’s ACWA Power as the world’s largest water project developer outside of China. GWI, which publishes market reports about the water industry, noted that the Saudi firm took a significant lead on its list of top global developers with 6.8 million cubic meters per day of gross capacity and 3.2 million m3/d of net capacity, a press statement said. It stated that in 2022 ACWA Power added 2.4 million m3/day of water desalination capacity via four plants in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE. “We are honored to have been recognized by an esteemed organization such as Global Water Intelligence as the world’s largest water project developer outside of China,” said ACWA Power CEO Marco Arcelli in the statement. He added: “Our impact extends beyond Saudi Arabia. We are already present in 12 countries and counting, with our water portfolio represented in four of them, and we plan to more than double our capacity by 2030. We plan to invest in new markets in Central Asia, China, Southeast Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.” The list compiled by GWI covers companies that have delivered water and wastewater treatment projects using private finance by taking equity stakes in project companies. The rankings were decided after analyzing the gross and aggregated capacity based on the percentage size of stakes they hold in the plants. According to the GWI report, the global water market is almost entirely dominated by China, with Beijing Enterprises Water Group the world’s largest owner of private treatment infrastructure. In May, ACWA Power revealed that it posted a net profit of SR269.7 million ($71.89 million) for the first quarter of this year, up 78 percent from SR151.9 million in the same period a year ago. In a statement to Tadawul, the company attributed the rise in profit to higher operating income due to higher contributions from existing projects, including plants that experienced outages in the same quarter of last year.