Marrakech – Morocco has selected a joint-venture bid carrying technology from Australia’s Rubicon Water to modernize the main irrigation canals of the Béni Moussa perimeter in the Tadla plain, one of the country’s largest irrigated agricultural areas.
The Office Régional de Mise en Valeur Agricole du Tadla (ORMVAT) chose the bid after separate administrative, technical, and financial assessments carried out through Morocco’s official public procurement process.
A joint venture between Rubicon’s Spanish and Moroccan partners submitted the winning offer, with Rubicon’s technology accounting for roughly A$12 million of the total.
The selection is not yet final. Under Moroccan tender law, formal execution follows a statutory 15-day appeal period, after which the joint venture would move from selected-contractor status to a signed, euro-denominated contract with secure payment terms.
Béni Moussa covers about 69,600 hectares supplied by regulated water from the Bin El Ouidane dam. Its canal-regulation infrastructure has operated since the 1950s, which helps explain why ORMVAT is now seeking automated control technology. Rubicon would supply the major components through its Spanish and Moroccan partners.
The scope includes Total Channel Control technology, automated canal-regulation gates, communications infrastructure, and the NeuroFlo software platform. Together, they would allow real-time monitoring and autonomous control of canal flows and water levels, improving the stability, accuracy, and responsiveness of water delivery.
The project forms the next layer of a modernization effort that has run in Tadla for nearly two decades. ORMVAT launched a feasibility study for Béni Moussa in 2007 and has since worked to convert farms from traditional gravity irrigation to localized drip systems.
Across the program, 49,000 of a targeted 72,200 hectares have already been converted, with 23,200 hectares remaining. The agency aims to raise irrigation efficiency from around 50% to 90%.
An earlier phase, the Large-Scale Irrigation Modernization Project (PMGI) in western Béni Moussa, covered 12,100 hectares and nearly 2,926 farmers. It added distribution networks, filtration stations, and a 100,000-cubic-meter regulating reservoir, with financing support from the World Bank.
Within the wider perimeter, around 27,000 hectares are already converted or being converted to pressurized drip irrigation, according to the company announcement.
The Rubicon project would modernize the main canals that feed those systems rather than the farm-level networks. That distinction matters as Morocco confronts deepening water scarcity.
The World Bank ranks Morocco among the world’s most water-stressed countries and reports that per-capita water availability fell from about 2,600 cubic meters a year in the 1960s to around 600 cubic meters in 2020.
Agricultural dam reserves roughly halved over a decade, cutting the area served by large-scale irrigation by 44%. Morocco’s National Irrigation Water Saving Program targets about 550,000 hectares nationally.
Founded in 1995 and listed on the Australian Securities Exchange under RWL, Rubicon Water specializes in automating gravity-fed irrigation networks. A commissioned Tadla project would become its largest to date in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, and its second-largest single contract outside Australia.
Chief Executive Officer Bruce Rodgerson welcomed the selection of the bid “incorporating Rubicon’s technology” for what he called “this landmark project in Morocco.” He grouped Tadla with the Canalone contract awarded in late August among five major incremental opportunities worth A$47 million that the company classed as “Close” in its FY26 results presentation.
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