PROJECT REVIEW
Crystal Clear
Carlos Salas, regional director of Middle East at Crystal Lagoons, talks about the company’s latest 12.5-hectare CityStars Sharm El Sheikh project in Egypt; winning the Guinness World Record for the largest manmade body of water in the world
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rystal Lagoons, developer of the patented technology of giant crystalline lagoons, was awarded by Guiness World Record (GWR) once again for its Sharm El Sheikh manmade lagoon. The current record breaks the company’s own previous record since 2007 for its eight-hectare San Alfonso del Mar lagoon in Chile. In Egypt, the $5.5m lagoon is the centrepiece of the $500m CityStars Sharm El Sheikh tourism development undertaken by the Sharbatly family. Works on the lagoon completed last year, with the GWR announcement officially made in December 2015, while the first hotel within the development is set to open in April 2016. Once completed, the 750-hectare community will feature 12 lagoons using 100 hectares of salt water sourced from underground aquifers. Aimed to be a major leisure attraction, the development as a whole is set to have 30,000 planned residential units along with hotels, a golf course, marinas, museums, and a shopping mall. The company’s first project provided the experience to help navigate through this project. The first project built at San Alfonso del Mar in Chile became one of the most successful second-home resort in the southern hemisphere, surpassing the competition in terms of sales, offering units at higher prices and selling them at higher rates.
52 construction business news me February 2016
Carlos Salas
Sharm El Sheikh lagoon
“Due to this success, real estate firms from all over the world are interested in the idea of having our technology as part of their projects to increase demand, return rates, and build projects previously deemed unviable for real estate,” Salas observes. The lagoon was then certified the world’s largest lagoon by GWR in 2007, and since then it became the platform from which the company launched its global expansion. The Sharm El Sheikh project, on the other hand, marks Crystal Lagoon’s first mixed-use project where the technology will be used for recreational purposes as well as for water desalination. Salas explains: “With systems such as our telemetry-controlled pulses and energy-efficient ultrasound filtration, our lagoons use up
to 100 times fewer chemicals and only 2% of the energy required by traditional swimming pools.” All the lagoons’ hydraulic, biochemical and mechanical systems are controlled and operated remotely from Chile via internet platform. “This allows us to maintain the water within our pre-defined parametres, guaranteeing standardised water quality in all our lagoons, regardless of their location.” He adds that Crystal Lagoons has developed a technology and concept patent-protected in 160 countries that makes possible the construction and maintenance of crystalline bodies of water limitless in size at very low costs. Pure and sustainable water use Salas states: “What is truly unique about this project is not only its desert