South Africa’s Master Drilling has been advancing its partnership with Detra in the Russian market, with the companies having completed six months of work at Norilsk Nickel’s Severny copper-nickel mine, part of its Kola MMC division, using a Master Drilling RD3-250 raiseboring rig. DETRA says that in Russia this is the first raiseboring project of this type with significant involvement of a foreign company. It said in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and strict sanitary requirements of the customer, it was still able to organise the work together with Master Drilling specialists and offer the customer the most modern drilling standards.

Four raises have been completed – two ore passes and two ventilation holes (one could be used as emergency exit) between two existing levels. The ore pass drilling was carried out from a horizon of -350 m without the use of the RVDS guide system – the rig was “led” by people. At the same time, the accuracy achieved was very high. The deviation was 12 cm over 120 m in length, that is, 0.1%. DETRA employees have received certificates of professional suitability for working with the Master Drilling rigs. Now the partners are preparing for a bigger goal – drilling for Polymetal at its Mayskoye refractory gold mine in Chukotka under the unified Master Detra company which deepens the collaboration between the two companies to offer joint venture raise bore services to the Russian and Kazakhstan markets.