A floating desalination plant to supply water to Jeddah has arrived at Shuaiba, 110 km south of Jeddah on the Red Sea coast, a report said.

The plant will start providing Jeddah with a daily supply of 25,000 cu m of water within three weeks, the Saline Water Conversion Corporation (SWCC) was quoted as saying by a Saudi Gazette report.

The floating plant is now anchored at Shuaiba coast for technical work to connect its 12 units with supply pipes, a task estimated to take three weeks, said director of operations and maintenance at Shuaiba Desalination Plant Eng. Abdulhadi Al-Sheikh.

Another floating plant with the same capacity of daily supply of water is now being prepared in Dammam and will arrive in Shuaiba within next two months, increasing the daily supply of water to Jeddah to 50,000 cu m, he said.

The two ships were built in a record time to help ease the water crisis in Jeddah.

Al-Sheikh said a new desalination project is under way to supply Jeddah with 240,000 cu m of water daily. The ongoing project called Shuaiba-3 is expected to be completed by February 2009 with a total capacity of 1.3 m cu m of water to supply Makkah, Jeddah, Taif, and Baha, he said.