Tag Archives: geotechnical analysis

Master Drilling makes ‘horizontal integration’ move with Geoserve buy

Master Drilling has announced that it has fulfilled all the necessary conditions to acquire Geoserve Exploration Drilling, increasing the South Africa-based company’s ability to offer exploration drilling, reverse circulation drilling, geotechnical investigations and grade control drilling services.

In its 2019 financial year results, released today, it said the relevant competition commission had approved the transaction and Geoserve, a private company specialising in exploration and drilling services, would now be embedded into the company’s African segment as a wholly-owned subsidiary.

Danie Pretorius, CEO of Master Drilling, said: “The transaction will augment our expertise and global reach, as well as provide a platform for horizontal integration in the mining industry, which has been under pressure in the past few years, necessitating consolidation.”

Master Drilling paid MOGS Mining Services ZAR100 ($5.7) for the company, as well as assumed the bank overdraft facility and certain liabilities tied to Geoserve, it said. The company said a detailed purchase price allocation will be performed during 2020 and disclosed in its 2020 financial statements.

Master Drilling added: “Geoserve has a well-established footprint and pipeline that will reinforce Master Drilling’s capacity and income profile through increased exploration drilling, reverse circulation drilling, geotechnical investigations and grade control drilling services, which are all key to the broader mining sector.”

Mine Vision Systems and Peck Tech to combine 3D mobile mapping expertise

Mine Vision Systems and Peck Tech Consulting have announced the intent to combine their products, services and expertise to deliver, they say, “industry leading, innovative 3D mobile mapping solutions for GPS-denied environments.”

MVS is an industry funded spin-off from Carnegie Mellon University’s National Robotics Engineering Center with a portfolio of patented and proprietary solutions for automated geotechnical and geologic analysis and standardised reporting of information critical to underground mining operations, it says.

Peck Tech, meanwhile, is a global provider of advanced sensing, monitoring, control and automation consulting services and products to the mining industry. It was also recently engaged by RNC Minerals for an autonomous haulage solution study on the Dumont nickel-copper project, in Quebec, Canada.

For the past five years, the two companies have independently pursued the development and sales of advanced sensor-based, mobile 3D localisation and mapping solutions to underground mining and utility customers on a global basis.

This has allowed both to “establish…a solid, growing customer base for their products and fostered an internal commitment to continuously seek new and innovative mobile scanning solutions that can address a wide range of safety and productivity issues present in their customer’s mining operations,” they said.

Dr Scott Thayer, Chief Executive Officer, MVS, said the company is committed to building and delivering the best mobile mapping solutions it can for its customers to allow them to derive significant value from their routine operational use.

“By partnering with Peck Tech, we will be able to combine the solutions and capabilities of proven industry pioneers in the mobile scanning and mapping space to further enhance the value that we can deliver to our customers by offering a much broader range of product and services option,” he said.

Dr Jonathan Peck, Chief Executive Officer and President, Peck Tech, said MVS and Peck Tech are already aligned in many areas including sharing a common vision for the future market opportunities for LiDAR and optical-based 3D mobile mapping solutions.

“By combining our product strengths and complementary skills, experience and knowledge, the broad suite of advanced solutions that will result will deliver significant productivity and safety benefits and choices to both our underground and open-pit mining customers,” he said.