Foraco International, a provider of mineral and water drilling services, has announced a series of major contracts with Vale Canada for the provision of exploration, definition drilling and large diameter rotary drilling.

The exploration and evaluation drilling services – both surface and underground – are key services for Vale operations and include drilling at the Voisey Bay mine in Labrador, Copper Cliff and Coleman mines in Ontario, as well as at Thompson mine, Manitoba, the company said. All operations involve deep directional diamond requiring a total of 30 rigs, and have a total face value of $55 million.

Daniel Simoncini, CEO of Foraco, said: “We are partnering with Vale in Canada since 2007 and developed an excellent relationship with this prestigious client which was one of the very first to test us for our deep directional drilling technology. This is a great reward for all our staff, engineers, field crews and support teams.

“As already stated before, we believe long-term relationships with leading global mining companies like Vale are an efficient way to increase our business model resilience, ensure a stable and fair financial return while providing good quality professional life to our employees with who we can share a time horizon long enough to develop them, train them and make them safer and happier.”