Caterpillar machines dig in the desert

A fleet of more than 100 Caterpillar machines is moving 20000 m³ of sand every day to build the world's largest fully integrated Aquaculture project in the Saudi Arabian desert.

The prawn farm, run by Saudi Arabia's National Prawn Company (NPC), produces 45 tonnes of prawns daily and uses desert land unsuitable for agriculture or housing, and water from the Red Sea.

The farm relies on its own energy with a desalination installation and a 21 MW power plant as well as four mobile Caterpillar generator sets.

Local Caterpillar dealer, Zahid Tractor, conducted a site survey at the farm to decipher earthmoving needs and also recommended specific machines for the work.

Rao Ganeswara, earthworks manager at NPC said, "Of course, NPC has its own team of highly skilled service technicians, but for the articulated dump trucks, Zahid Tractor sends its own engineers to check the advanced electronics in these machines."

The Cat dealer also offers a parts delivery service and an engineer visits every week to check machine health and performance, as well as providing a full day's training to all our new machine operators, he added.