I manage a mining/crushing/quarry company here in the UAE. We take mountains, crush them into little bits, put it into trucks, and move it to Dubai where they make concrete mountains. We also sell boulders which get dumped into the sea to make the palm islands, the world island, and a whole bunch of other islands along the coast.
It’s a boom that’s difficult to comprehend if you’re not here. The UAE has 4.5 million people living here (of which 85% are expats). We produce more aggregate than the UK and France combined. More than 30% of the world’s cranes are in Dubai alone. Our sister company has just started another project – 21 buildings, all more than 40 storeys high. All of them have to be completed in 14 months. And they are not big players in the industry. At Jebel Ali next door to Dubai they’ve started a new city of 142 square kilometers for 900,000 people. Time to finish – 5 years. Not to mention the new airport that can take 120 million passengers a year… The pic above is of one of the new housing complexes being built..
There isn’t enough labour, not enough engineers, not enough raw material – and it’s been booming like this for years. Is it a bubble? Will it burst? No one knows. Even the experts differ widely, some say it’s going to crash and burn, others say this is just the start.
7 comments:
Do They need IT guys and how would I go about solving that?
Yes they do need good IT people. The Indians have cornered the market, but most of them haven't got a clue. If you interested I can give you websites... but might also have some contacts to send your CV to.
My parents were there in Jan this year and as you know my uncle lives there. They reckon that Dubai has another 10 years max before the bubble bursts.
I would love to be there, but so far it hasn't worked out that way for me.
It is frightening the rate at which they produce cities and structures within the sea.
Can i ask a stupid question? Lets say there was to be a tsunami off the dubai coast would the sea send all those boulders flying and that would be the world islands and the palms gone? Don't they move?
When i was down in Keurbooms in Jan, there was a difference in the shoreline from 3 weeks prior. The sea is totally alive. How come they don't move?
Sorry if it's a dumb q...
The gulf is shallow, there are few currents and the low/high tide differences are too small to be a problem. There is a huge active fault on the Iran side of the gulf about 140km away, butearthquakes tsunamis are considered low risk. With the build quality here, if there was one, everything will fall flat. The Palm islands are an ecological disaster, but that's another blog on its own.
Hmm... okay cool thanks for clearing that up for me, no one else could answer me.
I guess, as long as they can sell oil they have to do something with all that money. Who is the target market for all these buildings, housing, cities, etc?
The new developments have recently been opened to expats (until recently foreigners were not allowed to own property). So most of them are aimed at expats, and wealthy ones at that. One bedroom apartments can easily cost you R24,000 a month to pay off.So its overpriced - skin tax
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