We awarded the dirt contract to a major excavation company here
in Texas last week. They have begun their mobilization phase. The first of
their equipment arrived at the site this afternoon.
This is a very exciting time for all of us who have endured the
10 plus year roller coaster ride with this project.
Their contract calls for the dirt work for the entire site for
phase 1 of our expansion to have finished everything on site no later than 90
days from today. I suspect given the size and sophistication of this excavation
company they will be done sooner.
The first of the three rigid air structures that we ordered two
weeks ago should be shipped to the site sometime between August 1 and August 15
and then installed and inflated over the next two weeks.
We have to have the foundation in place before then and are
currently designing that as we speak. It is a serious piece of engineering as
it is over 1,000 feet long and over 150 feet wide and serves as the key
component that allows these structures to handle 120 miles an hour wind loads
for the facility.
So, long story short we are slightly ahead of schedule toward
our goal of having the fist module up and filling with water by mid September.
Manufacturing for the cover for module # 2 will commence on November 1st and is
scheduled to be shipped for installation in early 2014.
We intend to be harvesting shrimp from two modules by June 2014.
We should be able to produce close to one million pounds of
jumbo shrimp in 2014.
We had a few visitors here the past three days and during this
time I realized something I had not recognized before. Even though I thought I
had made the scale and scope of the commercial facility clear to everyone, it
turns out I had not. No one had even an approximate conception of the scale of
production we are creating or what it takes in materials and structures and
water volume to grow shrimp at the industrial production levels we are
targeting.
This became very apparent when in my truck I stopped, pointed to
where the south corner where one single production module begins and then drove
the 1,000 plus feet to where the building would end on the north corner. Every
person which no exceptions, when I stopped remarked something along the lines
of " Good Lord" or "Holy S---".
Even the 2 1/2 million pound production footprint, (which is
simply the first phase of the total construction piece we have in development
for the full site), is enormous in scale.
In the USA when we finish the 4th module and start-harvesting
shrimp from all four modules we will become the largest producer of farmed
shrimp in the USA.
In any event we are off to the races or as our farm manager has
been calling it these past two years we are off to " the BIG SHOW ".
Attached is a picture of Mike Dickin, our new construction
manager beside the first piece of equipment that just arrived today.
Pretty cool, right?
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