Saudi Arabia’s floor mining business is rising quickly, and contracting teams are taking part in an essential function in offering mining companies each to Maaden because the main mine proprietor and operator within the Kingdom, but additionally to others. IM Editorial Director Paul Moore right here critiques the three main floor contractors within the nation – Jac Rijk Al-Rushaid, EPSA and Saudi Comedat.
Their actions are immediately targeted on phosphate and gold mining operations however within the future there are clearly different alternatives in different commodities because the mining business within the Kingdom grows and develops.
Beginning with phosphate, there’s a very vertically built-in phosphate enterprise mannequin in Saudi Arabia. Phosphate mining takes place on the Al Jalamid and Al Khabra websites within the far north of the nation, which produce roughly 11 Mt/y and 12 Mt/y of phosphate ore, respectively. Ore from Al Jalamid is transported 1,200 km to Ras Al Khair for processing into phosphate fertiliser. In the meantime, ore from Al Khabra is processed into phosphate focus on the Wa’advert Al Shamal industrial metropolis, then railed to Ras Al Khair for processing into phosphate fertiliser.
Contractor Saudi Comedat operates the Al-Jalamid mine which is situated close to to the Kingdom’s borders with Iraq and Jordan within the northern province. The contractor is mining round 27-30 MBcm per 12 months of fabric – each overburden and phosphate. That makes it the most important single mine within the Kingdom by way of volumes of fabric moved.
Comedat has a coaching program with the Saudi Mining Polytechnic the place it really works with them to coach up 50 college students – and as of 2025 this has been divided 50-50 between women and men which is an indicator of how girls are more and more turning into a part of heavy business employment sector within the Kingdom. This has concerned modifications to permit for cultural norms within the nation – equivalent to the feminine employees have their very own lodging camp – and all the contractors – not simply Comedat are on this highway – but it surely represents a significant step ahead.
Comedat is taking a look at a variety of completely different applied sciences to assist optimise its mining fleet operations. These embrace the most recent fleet administration and information administration system expertise but it surely has additionally deployed simulators to assist in coaching and recruitment of operators.
One among its core competencies is an capability to take care of its mining gear to a really excessive customary – permitting it to run for so long as doable at a excessive efficiency degree thanks to main refurbishment packages, with quite a lot of its personal rebuilds performed onsite in its personal upkeep store, which incorporates utilizing OEM rebuild kits from Caterpillar and others. It has an O&Ok RH120 excavator with greater than 100,000 hours – which is nonetheless offering excessive uptime and availability.
The Comedat truck fleet goes by an improve course of in the mean time – it had 40 Terex TR100 vehicles which had been working for some years however in 2023 it started changing these with 10 new Volvo R100 vehicles and in 2025 added one other 11 of those items, making it one of many largest single mine customers of this truck globally. General, the Al-Jalamid mine requires round 35 vehicles to take care of its required manufacturing ranges – so as soon as the most recent batch of R100s is all operating, 21 of these might be R100s and the remaining 14 the remaining Terex TR100 machines. In 2025, Comedat additionally added a virtually new Caterpillar 6030 hydraulic face shovel to its fleet which joined the older RH120 machine and one other Caterpillar 6030. The mine additionally has Cat 992 wheel loaders and D9 dozers.
The subsequent large transfer for phosphate mining within the Kingdom is the Phosphate 3 enlargement, for which the contract was awarded to a second main contracting firm – Jac Rijk Al-Rushaid – in February 2025. Phosphate 3 will improve Saudi Arabia’s complete phosphate manufacturing capability to 9 Mt yearly. Jac Rijk Al-Rushaid’s in depth portfolio already consists of main gold tasks at As Suq, Advert Duwayhi, and Mansourah & Massarah, as nicely as important participation in NEOM’s The Line and Connector Tasks.
Jac Rijk Al-Rushaid operated Cat 6018 hydraulic shovel
The JV between Al-Rushaid Group and Jac Rijk BV introduced collectively two companions – one native and one worldwide. Jac Rijk, a Netherlands headquartered firm had already been efficiently working mines in Africa for eight years together with different places together with Suriname in South America in addition to in Germany. The unique undertaking received by the JV was in 2012 on the As Sug gold mine initially improvement after which into manufacturing in 2014.
After that it has grown within the Kingdom organically, and was given a second gold undertaking at Advert Duwayhi. After which most not too long ago it was entrusted with the gold mining at Mansourah and Massarah. That is presently by far the most important gold mine within the nation. The JV gives a full service by way of drill and blast, ore and waste load and haul, haul highway building and different infrastructure improvement, common fleet operations and upkeep plus some mine technical design.
Jac Rijk Al-Rashaid has a big fleet – it’s Saudi Cat vendor Zahid Cat’s largest buyer for reference and its mining division has grown together with them. Its line-up consists of 100 t class Cat 777 vehicles plus smaller 775/773 fashions in addition to 740 ADTs; together with hydraulic excavators as much as 300 t – the Caterpillar 6030 – in addition to the 6020, 6018 and 6015 plus the Komatsu PC1250 and PC850 in addition to others. Plus a Sandvik DI650i Leopard/ DP1100 and Epiroc T35 crawler drill fleet and an auxiliary fleet of Cat D8 and D9 dozers in addition to a robust wheel loader fleet together with the Komatsu WA500, Cat 980L and Cat 966H.
This consists of all service and help – any main refurbs and rebuilds are performed by the OEMs with related warranties. The contractor additionally works with third occasion corporations the consumer is participating with on sure applied sciences – for instance Hexagon’s Operator Alertness fatigue administration system is put in on a variety of its machines plus it’s utilizing their OP Professional fleet administration system (FMS). These run off the mine’s 5G community which is from STC utilizing Huawei expertise. Along with the shopper, it’s also utilizing AI platforms to analyse all of the FMS and different information which is producing spectacular reporting outcomes – and that is on prime of the standard advantages from FMS like higher scheduling, optimisation and utilisation plus issues like gasoline effectivity. And it’s utilizing Hexagon’s Blast Motion Monitoring to exactly plan and perform blasting on-site, utilizing fewer explosives.
Jac Rijk Al-Rashaid has invested considerably in its operations within the Kingdom and in fleet phrases sources new gear the place doable, however additionally carries out quite a lot of rebuilds and refurbs. The oldest gear at Mansourah and Massarah has about 14,000 hours however at different websites it has machines with over 40,000 hours.
The third important participant in Saudi floor contracting is Spanish firm EPSA, which is the contractor on the Al-Khabra phosphate mine the place it utilises a fleet of Komatsu HD785-7 mining vehicles. EPSA can be the contractor at Sukhaybarat gold mine and like Jac Rijk Al-Rushaid can be concerned within the NEOM undertaking. Its gear fleet additionally consists of giant hydraulic excavators just like the Komatsu PC2000 and PC5500 plus the Liebherr R 9350.
EPSA entered the Center East market, together with Saudi Arabia, in 2011
Trying to future alternatives and staying with gold, Ar Rjum is a Tier 3 gold asset for which a Remaining Funding Determination (FID) was made in 2025 – and in October Bechtel was named because the EPCM and is managing the event of the open-pit mine and processing facility within the Makkah Area. It’s roughly 200 km northeast of Ta’if and is projected to provide 3.6 Moz of gold over a 12-year lifetime of mine interval. The undertaking will embrace an open-pit operation and a state-of-the-art processing facility able to dealing with a throughput of 8 Mt of ore. The mining contractor for Ar Rjum has but to be introduced.
Long run, quite a lot of main mining homes from ERG to Zijin, First Quantum, Hancock, Vale, Ivanhoe Mines and others are additionally investing in potential future tasks and alternatives, there’s enormous potential for extra floor contracting within the Kingdom – in addition to underground. Byrnecut has been working on the Jabal Sayid underground copper mine for over 15 years, most of it with the Jabal Sayid Joint Enterprise between Maaden and Barrick which was arrange in 2014.
After all, contracting has its challenges and a type of immediately is the diesel value in Saudi Arabia which went up by over 44% for 2025 in comparison with 2024 – and within the medium time period might even see contractors look in direction of battery or hybrid machines, particularly as there’s a quickly growing availability of renewable energy on the mines. This additionally ties into Maaden long run commitments to sustainability – that are carbon neutrality by 2050, and a 60% discount in Scope 1 & 2 GHG emissions depth by 2040. Maaden not too long ago joined the ICMM and has subsequently additionally dedicated to ICMM’s Mining Ideas which outline good follow Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) necessities for the mining business by a complete set of 40 efficiency expectations.
