NPC, Aramco to team up on environmental management

14/07/2010 00:00 AST

The National Prawn Company (NPC) and Saudi Aramco would collaborate on knowledge management and environmental care, especially with respect to the marine habitat, in the near future.

The agreement reached last June 30 after a meeting held in Al Lith between senior executives NPC and experts from Saudi Aramco was an offshoot of a presentation given to Aramco executives, led by Ahmed Al-Saadi, Aramco’s vice president of Pipeline, Distribution and Terminal division, who had gathered at NPC’s site for a mid-year meeting to assess the performance of the division in the Western Province and identify the goals achieved during the past six months.

After the meeting, Engineer Ahmad Bin Rasheed Al-Balaa of NPC delivered a special presentation about the company, its views on the development of the prawn industry and their strategic plans for the future.

NPC is currently engaged on a huge expansion project that when complete in a few years will cover an area of about five times the size of Bermuda and see the company’s output of top quality prawns soar to over 40,000 tons per annum.

NPC has a core policy of environmental care. The prawns are produced without any use whatsoever of chemicals or antibiotics and relies on very strict bio-hazard management procedures to ensure the health of the prawns and the care of the environment they live in.

NPC has achieved the much sought after status of exporting sushi quality prawns to Japan and this currently constitutes the Kingdom’s second biggest export - after oil - to that market. NPC recently launched its own brand in the Saudi market.

Saudi Gazette