Lantania to build desalination plant in Tunisia for agricultural producer Agro Care

• It obtains a contract to develop an infrastructure with the capacity to desalinate 7,500 m3 daily, expandable to 15,000 m3

Madrid, 26 Febrery 2025. Lantania has signed its first contract in Tunisia, where it will be responsible for the construction of a desalination plant for Agro Care, one of the main tomato producers in Europe. The infrastructure, water and energy Group will develop this facility in the Tunisian town of Gabes, located about 100 km north of Djerba. The plant will have a capacity of 7,500 m³/day of desalinated water, expandable to 15,000 m³/day, which will be used to irrigate crops under greenhouses.

The new infrastructure, which will be completed in 14 months, will incorporate reverse osmosis technology. Water will be obtained from the adjacent Mediterranean Sea and pumped to the desalination plant, where it will be processed through two stages of filtration and two stages of osmosis, thus obtaining water suitable for Agro Care’s crops. The contract includes a 12-month operation and maintenance period.

This facility is part of Agro Care’s Hicha Joy agricultural expansion project, which aims to expand the existing crops in Desert Joy. The latter is made up of a series of greenhouses covering 40 hectares, currently under cultivation. Hicha Joy is a greenfield project whose purpose is to increase the production capacity of tomatoes in the region, with a total estimated investment of approximately 200 million euros.

The infrastructure of Hicha II will include the construction of twelve state-of-the-art glass greenhouses, covering an area of 120 hectares for the cultivation of tomatoes, a warehouse, and a cogeneration plant to generate energy and CO₂. In addition, a desalination plant will be built to guarantee the irrigation of the crops, a project that will be managed by Lantania. The project is co-financed by IFC, a member of world bank group, and complies to its strict environmental and social standards.

The Dutch company Agro Care, with a presence in the Netherlands, France, Morocco and Tunisia, is one of the largest producers of cherry tomatoes in Europe. The company has a total cultivated area of 500 hectares. Desert Joy is the name of Agro Care’s subsidiary in Tunisia, a country where it has been present since 2012. Located in El Hamma, near the Sahara Desert, Desert Joy has an area of 40 hectares where cherry tomatoes, mini tomatoes on the vine and snack tomatoes of different colours are grown in state-of-the-art greenhouses.

Lantania Water, a benchmark in desalination

Lantania’s water division is a global leader in the design, construction, operation and maintenance of desalination plants, offering innovative, efficient and sustainable solutions that resolve the scarcity of water resources in areas with deficits. Lantania Water has a multidisciplinary team with more than 15 years of experience that integrates advanced technologies into its work, such as low-consumption reverse osmosis membranes, energy recovery units and ring pressure centers, optimizing performance and reducing operating costs.

The company is at the forefront of desalination research, constantly seeking to improve the sustainability of its plants by using brine and integrating it with renewable energy. Among its most notable projects is Jubail 3A, one of the largest desalination plants in the world with the capacity to generate 600,000 m³/day of drinking water that supplies a population equivalent to 1,600,000 inhabitants.