Back in 2004, Saudi Arabia turned to the private sector to share the responsibility for generating electricity and producing desalinated water by using private public partnerships. Our founding shareholders saw an opportunity to use this domestic platform to create a world class developer of high-performing assets that competes with peers from the developed world. By 2009 we had amassed a powerful portfolio and took our first step outside Saudi Arabia with the strategic acquisition of a 58% share of Barka 1 IWPP, an operational plant in the Sultanate of Oman.
We have established five international offices, in Dubai, Beijing and Istanbul, Johannesburg and Rabat and we have on the ground presences in Jordan and Oman and our employee base has grown substantially to over 2,300. We are able to hire the best talent in the sector to fuel our growth strategy . Much of the glory for our achievements rightfully belongs to our multi-disciplinary team of employees who bring a wide range of skills to our entrepreneurial organization.
Considerable work has been undertaken in strengthening the company through organizational development and the institutionalization of processes and procedures will remain an ongoing work in progress for the medium term
We have achieved our objectives of building a team and assembling a world class portfolio of projects and implementing our next plan which is based on our proven ability to reliably dispatch water and power.
We have a series of ambitious but well defined growth targets to assemble, by 2018, a portfolio approaching 38,000 MW gross contracted capacity of power and five million m3/day of gross desalinated water, including:
- new Greenfield production capacity of 17,700 MW of power and 1 million m3/day of desalinated water;
- acquisitions of operating capacity of 7,600 MW of power and 1.5 million m3/day of desalinated water;
- Approximately 10% of our power generating capacity from renewable energy sources, principally from solar power.
These may appear to be aggressive targets, but they are achievable by consolidating half our portfolio within Saudi Arabia and the remainder from international opportunities. We plan to expand on our presence in the countries we operate in in addition to other identified markets. Today we are proud own stakes in assets in the GCC, Jordan, Turkey, North Africa and South Africa.
Recognizing the importance of managing our carbon footprint and taking advantage of the solid commercial opportunities, we have already invested in learning about solar power. We remain convinced that MENA region is ready to embrace this energy source in the near future.
