Mountains of earth have been moved to enable the building of the New Asda Wal-Mart superstore which was being opened in Swindon today.

But the many shoppers and more than 900 staff at the UK's biggest purpose-built store in Haydon Wick, are unlikely to appreciate the immensity of the task carried out by West company Churngold Waste management.

It has involved the excavation and removal of more than 23,000 lorry loads of material from the site in one of the biggest earth moving projects the South West has seen.

Churngold, specialists in site clearance, shifted a colossal 190,000 cubic metres of material from the site in a 10-week period, in order to make way for the building of the new 100,000 sq ft superstore which was built by main contractor HBG Construction Ltd.

The earth excavated from the site has been used to cap-off Swindon Borough Council's Shaw landfill site which will be turned into a community park in the near future.

For John Barcham, operations director for Churngold Waste Management, overseeing the clearance was a considerable logistical task.

"Throughout the 10 week project, five lorries were loading at any one time during the day," he said.

"The total amount of material shifted is enough to fill 245 Olympic swimming pools."