Master Drilling Group has announced a 40% investment in AVA Solutions, a specialist in data-driven mining fleet management solutions.
Founded in 2015 by Anton Fourie and Jason van der Watt, two engineers with over 25 years of combined mining industry experience, AVA has achieved significant recognition in South Africa by creating a captive market for its disruptive, hardware-agnostic and quick to implement Software as a Service (SaaS) model at much lower costs to other solutions, Master Drilling says. Currently, AVA’s digital platform analyses and tracks more than 1,800 load and haul vehicles across 28 different sites in five countries for a range of major companies including the likes of Anglo American, Exxaro and South32.
Danie Pretorius, Master Drilling CEO, said: “Technological innovation is a key priority for Master Drilling as we continue to support our clients to move down the cost curve, optimise their operations and increase safety. Our investment in AVA is aligned with our strategy to diversify our services and invest in opportunities in our existing target markets with low capital requirements and short return cycles.
“We believe that AVA has great growth potential, and we look forward to supporting them through our existing client base and networks internationally.”
AVA’s solution was shaped by the founders’ knowledge of the mining industry and understanding of the challenges faced in the production environment, according to Master Drilling. “By condensing multiple technology layers into a single interface, AVA ensures that equipment operates at its optimal level of performance with little to no additional capital investment,” it said.
Anton Fourie, Co-Founder and COO of AVA, said: “We have grown exponentially from a start-up five years ago to a recognised player with a proven technology for the mining industry. We have a clear strategy to provide an end-to-end solution that goes beyond the load and haul environment and across the entire mining value chain. Through our partnership with Master Drilling, we are gaining access to extensive experience that will support the ongoing development of our platform and a footprint that will accelerate our international expansion.”
The next developments for AVA’s scalable platform will focus on new elements including scheduling and logistics that will enable mines to not only improve productivity of the load and haul value chain but of the entire mining value chain, according to Master Drilling.