Swick Mining Services Ltd, a leading provider of high‐quality underground and surface mineral drilling and mineral analysis services, has been awarded a contract extension from Northern Star Resources at the Jundee Gold Operations in Western Australia. The two‐year extension, with a two‐year option, was awarded at Swick’s target margins after a competitive tender process. Jundee is Swick’s largest contract, with 15 rigs currently deployed at the project including 2 DeepEX rigs.
Swick has also been awarded a contract extension from Perilya Ltd at the Broken Hill operation in New South Wales. The current contract has been in place for two years and Perilya have exercised the two‐year option of contract extension. Swick currently has four rigs in work at this site. Swick has been providing underground drilling services at the Broken Hill operation since July 2009.
These projects, combined with Swick’s existing work in hand, have expanded Swick’s order book to A$244 million.
Swick Managing Director Kent Swick said the contract renewals provided a solid foundation for the drilling business heading into FY21. “These contracts demonstrate the ongoing robust demand for our services, which is focused on production at underground mines and heavily skewed towards tier one clients,” Swick said. “Jundee is our largest underground diamond coring contract and I am very pleased that we will be extending our long‐term relationship to at least 15 years on site. Swick has drilled more than 2.35 million metres of underground core at Jundee since we started work in 2007, 1.45 million of which are attributed to the current owners Northern Star Resources. The Jundee scope is one of the largest underground drilling programs in the world.”
He added: “The renewal at Jundee also includes scope for our specialist DeepEX underground mobile rigs that are specially constructed for deeper underground drilling and have completed holes up to 1,607 metres in depth at site to date. The contract renewal further strengthens our relationship with our key customer Northern Star Resources, whom we also work for at the Pogo mine in Alaska. It is also pleasing that we have extended our contract at Broken Hill, where we have been the incumbent driller since 2009 drilling nearly 400,000 metres in that time.”