La Joie de Hicha SA

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The sponsor is a company called Agro Care (https://www.agrocare.nl/en), headquartered in the Netherlands with operations in the Netherlands, France, Morocco and Tunisia, one of the largest cherry tomato producers in Europe. The proposed investment is for a greenfield project, known as Hicha II, located north of Gabes on the Tunisian coast, adjacent to Hicha I, an existing Agro Care (AKA the “company”) operation. Hicha I (which is not subject to IFC financing) is a series of greenhouses covering 40 hectares, already producing tomatoes. Hicha II will involve the construction of five glass greenhouses (enabling 50 ha of tomato production), one warehouse, a proposed Combined Heat and Power (CHP) plant and a desalination plant to provide irrigation to the tomatoes for a total investment of c. EUR 134m. IFC will invest up to €68.1 million (including an A-loan of up to €39 million and up to €29.1 million in a syndicated loan to be mobilized) (the “project”).  The greenhouses for Hicha II will be built over the period 2024 –2027 with a surface area of 10 ha each. Construction will be managed by the same Serbian contractor that built the existing operations in Tunisia and will use local contractors. The glass greenhouses, modelled after the greenhouses already in use in the company’s Dutch operations, will be state of the art and will allow opening of the roof via panels to help regulate the inside temperature and optimize the growing climate. Given the availability of sunlight in Tunisia, they will not need artificial light. Tomatoes will be irrigated using drip irrigation.  Water for irrigation will be obtained from the adjacent Mediterranean Sea, pumped via a 3.5 km long raw water intake pipe into a desalinization plant, where it will be processed and circulated into the greenhouses. The brine generated by processing will be returned to the sea in a 2.5 km long offshore brine return pipe. The desalinization plant will use reverse osmosis (RO).  The CHP plant will provide heat, electricity and carbon dioxide (CO2.) It will be fueled using natural gas and utilize highly efficient internal combustion engines, the likes of which are employed in Agro Care’s Dutch operations.  The size of the plant is still being finalized but is expected to be in the order of 10MW. Excess electricity, if any, will be sold to the national grid.  The land upon which Hicha I has been built, and where Hicha II will be built, was obtained via a long-term lease, obtained by the company from the Government of Tunisia in a public tender, held in 2021. Classified as agricultural land, but ostensibly barren desert without any infrastructure capable of supporting agriculture, the 200-hectare parcel, located 4 km north of the village of Akarit, itself 30 km north of Gabes, is large enough to construct up to 122 hectares of greenhouses and associated infrastructure.The project is adjacent to a Ramsar site (Complexe des zones humides des Chott el Guetayate et Sebkhet Dhreia et Oueds Akarit, Rekhama et Meleh https://rsis.ramsar.org/ris/2076), the latter of which will be crossed by the raw water input and brine return pipes.