The problem
Rivers were diverted, aquifers over-pumped, and the Dead Sea started dropping a metre a year. For a water-short country adding population, the math only worked if the sea itself became a tap — at a price utilities could afford.
How it works
An occupier water-infrastructure company (Occupied Palestine), building plants worldwide — not a Palestinian company. IDE Technologies designs, builds and operates large-scale seawater reverse-osmosis plants: oversized 41 cm membranes, energy-recovery systems, and full EPC delivery with project financing. Its Sorek plant — completed 2013, then the largest and most advanced of its kind — delivers potable water to 1.5 million people, while its Carlsbad plant in California is the largest desalination facility in the Western Hemisphere. In total IDE built and operates Sorek plus 400 other RO plants in 40 countries.
Pain points
Exhausted groundwater, reservoirs hostage to rainfall, cities outgrowing supply, and governments unable to fund billion-dollar waterworks from current budgets.
Business model
Get paid twice: construction margins building the mega-plant, then 20-plus years of operating fees and per-cubic-metre water sales under long-term purchase agreements.
Challenges
Brine discharge regulation, electricity costs flowing straight into water tariffs, and losing Gulf-scale tenders to Acciona, Veolia and other EPC heavyweights.
Funding
- Raised: private company; no public rounds disclosed.
- Valuation: none disclosed.
Latest — Jun 2016
Physics Today profiled the desalination-plus-reuse system that made the occupier’s water supply officially drought-immune, with IDE’s Sorek named as the flagship plant and Carlsbad as its American proof of export (Physics Today, 1 Jun 2016).