NADEC Hail: Infrastructure Masterplan for a 190 ha Agro-Industrial Hub

NADEC is developing a large-scale, high-value crop and processing hub outside Hail. The planned development covers approximately 190 ha and includes blueberries, strawberries, leaf salads, seed potatoes, high-wire greenhouse crops, a mushroom compost facility and multiple food processing plants, all on one integrated site.

Rolling out a development of this scale in phases, in an arid environment, requires a strategy that holds together from the first phase through to full build-out.

NADEC appointed Ant Consult to lead the civil and infrastructure masterplanning and to deliver the Phase 1 detailed civil design.

The key challenges were to:

• Design a coherent site layout that integrates agricultural fields, greenhouses, factories and logistics infrastructure into one coordinated campus, with services planned from the start rather than added around completed buildings.
• Provide a dependable water supply for agricultural and industrial operations by quantifying water demand for every component of the development.
• Manage large volumes of wastewater from reverse osmosis water treatment. At peak irrigation season across early phases alone, daily reject volumes exceed 4,000 m³. That is not a detail to resolve later.
• Coordinate roads, power, sanitation and water infrastructure across development phases.
• Establish infrastructure costs early enough to support investment decisions.

Bulk water strategy

The water supply system was designed as two parallel networks rather than one.

A primary ring main carries all raw water demand, covering irrigation and potable supply for both agricultural and industrial users, drawing from multiple boreholes and buffering through a central master reservoir. Sizing was based on design flows from each facility's specialist, with a 20% safety factor applied and RO reject fractions accounted for at peak season.

A secondary borehole system, normally serving the centre pivot irrigation, can be switched to supply the high-value greenhouse crops during an emergency. In an arid environment where borehole failure is a real operational risk, that switchover capability is not a backup in name only.

For storage, we evaluated distributed on-farm storage against large centralised buffering. The arid environment and the risk of mechanical failure in the borehole supply tipped the recommendation toward significant central buffer storage. That decision reduces the consequence of any single supply failure across the development.

Managing RO reject water

The project's most significant infrastructure challenge is the volume of reject water produced by reverse osmosis treatment. We quantified reject volumes per phase and per production unit across the full development, then evaluated three disposal routes.

We recommended diluting the reject water and using it for irrigation where suitable. This reduces the need for large dedicated pipelines, concentrates operational management in one location, and makes productive use of water that would otherwise be a liability.

Evaporation ponds were sized against realistic evaporation rates for the Hail region as a secondary option. Disposal to unproductive ground was assessed but carries environmental risk that makes it unsuitable as a primary route.

Roads, sanitation, electrical and greenbelts

Roads were laid out in three classes: heavy haul routes for industrial traffic, medium routes for lighter vehicles and agricultural access roads for field operations. Service reserves of 5 m run along each side of the road network for buried utilities and future greenbelt planting.

Sanitation was designed as an on-site septic system scaled to the development's population and industrial requirements.

Electrical infrastructure was coordinated with NADEC's electrical engineer to align pipe and cable corridors and avoid constructability conflicts between services.

Greenbelts of 10 m were planned along roads and between development zones to create a cooler microclimate and provide an additional irrigation sink for saline water using salt-tolerant species.

Ant Consult delivered a spatially coherent, services-driven masterplan that ties the production units, processing facilities, housing and logistics of the Hail hub into one integrated site.

NADEC has a clear understanding of infrastructure capital cost and phasing across the full development, with Phase 1 civil works tender design already complete and aligned to the long-term masterplan. The bulk water and reject water strategies are technically resolved. The infrastructure sequencing is defined.

The development now has a path from concept to construction that is financially legible at board level and technically executable on the ground.