Moving the earth for prawns

If you saw this sight while crossing the Arabian desert, you would be forgiven for thinking it to be a mirage.
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In the scorching heat of the Saudi Arabian desert, more than 100 heavy machines are moving 20,000 cubic meters of sand every day to build the world’s largest fully-integrated Aquaculture project. The prawn farm run by Saudi Arabia’s National Prawn Company (NPC) produces no less than 50 tons of prawns daily.

The huge prawn farm uses desert land unsuitable for agriculture or housing, and water from the Red Sea. It does not destroy mangroves which are the traditional locations for prawn farms.

It relies on its own energy with a desalination installation and a 21megawatt power plant as well as 4 mobile Cat generator sets. The prawn species farmed at NPC are indigenous to the Red Sea and are grown naturally, without antibiotics or hormones.

 It has also become one of the foremost Research & Development centres for Aquaculture. “In building this prawn farm we’ve had to research and develop our own hydro dynamic concepts, our own mechanical harvesting methods, and our own high-saline feed formulas,” says Ahmad Al-Balla, general manager NPC.

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“What’s more we’ve developed our own, highly-rigorous bio-security regimes – as you can imagine the health and hygiene of our product is our main concern. We are proud that we have never had a single prawn rejected.”

The firm has opted to take all of its equipment from one supplier, in this case, Caterpillar.

The local dealer, Xahid Tractor, rose to the challenge.

 “The expert service and support from the local Cat dealer made it an obvious business decision to go 100 percent Cat,” says Rao Ganeswara, earthworks manager at NPC.

As a result of all this expertise, NPC intends to extend its activities into in-land fish farming – which also promises to be self-sufficient and sustainable.

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