Tag Archives: Leopard

Sandvik seals largest-ever single surface drills order from Country Boy Supply

Country Boy Supply, LLC, one of the newest dealers for Sandvik in the USA, has selected Sandvik Mining and Rock Solutions to supply 34 surface drill rigs to replace its current contractor fleet in Georgia and Tennessee, the largest-ever single surface drills order for Sandvik Mining and Rock Solutions.

Country Boy Supply (CBS) already had a large order focusing on the construction market in Georgia and Tennessee when Two Eight Drilling, its largest customer, approached CBS with a decision to switch to Sandvik equipment.

The record-setting order includes 16 Leopard™ DI650i drills, six Leopard DI550 drills, five Pantera™ DP1600i drills, three Ranger™ DX800 drills, three Ranger DX700 drills and one Pantera DP1500i drill.

“We were impressed with the productivity and uptime of the Sandvik surface equipment and made a strategic choice to flip our entire fleet,” CBS customer Brent Taylor, CEO of Two Eight Drilling, said. “We look forward to gaining all productivity improvements and testing the latest automation technology. CBS and Sandvik support was also un-paralleled.”

Deliveries are scheduled to start in the March quarter of 2024.

Jake Schmidtlein, General Manager of Country Boy Supply, LLC, said: “The key to getting this across the finish line was that both teams at CBS and Sandvik, along with the other members of the supply chain, worked together seamlessly. This is an excellent example of how business-led collaboration across the whole chain can create value for all parties.”

The surface drill rigs will be used for production drilling in various large quarries or open-pit mines, as well as construction work sites. Sandvik intelligent surface drill rigs bring the latest technology to surface mining applications, the OEM says. Designed to work in the toughest operating conditions, these rigs combine power with precision and are designed for efficiency and operator comfort.

“We are delighted to partner with Country Boy Supply and deliver the most productive and powerful surface drill rigs available to upgrade their fleet,” Ville Keinänen, Business Line Manager for Surface Drills, Sandvik Mining and Rock Solutions, said. “These new drill rigs will help increase profitability and productivity over their lifecycle. Our partnership will further strengthen Sandvik’s position in the surface drilling solutions market.

“Automation will be a key feature in the fleet upgrade as some of the drills will be equipped with AutoMine® readiness. We look forward to continuing to work hand-in-hand to add value to CBS’ business.”

Sandvik looks to shape the surface drilling electrification conversation

“We are showing what technology can do today.”

These were the words Mats Eriksson, President of Sandvik Mining and Rock Solutions, during the Capital Markets Day in Tampere, Finland, last week when describing the launch of Sandvik’s latest battery-electric concept surface drill rig.

This rig is representative of more than just technological advances in the mining industry, also acting as a tangible example of Sandvik’s efforts to become a leader in the surface drilling space.

It has been four years since Sandvik announced this ambition, with the company having made significant headway on achieving this goal.

Sandvik doubled its order intake for rotary drills from 2019 to 2022. Over this three-year period, the company launched the Leopard™ DI650i down-the-hole (DTH) drill rig to support fully autonomous drilling operations and went on to capture major autonomous drilling contracts in Latin America, Australia and Finland.

The OEM is looking to at least double its surface mining revenue from 2022 to 2028. Key contracts in 2023 from Boliden and MACA have already provided early positive momentum towards such a goal.

There is potential for Sandvik to steal a march on its competitors in this space – companies who have already been able to automate the largest blasthole drills in key markets in the Americas and Australia – by leveraging the electrification expertise it has built up underground.

This was highlighted by Eriksson last week and was reiterated further when IM spoke to the company’s experts in Tampere in front of the second battery-electric surface concept rig.

The concept vehicle is the first in its size class, capable of drilling DTH holes up to 229 mm in diameter and blending the autonomy of battery with the continuous endurance of power cable, Sandvik says.

Dan Gleeson, IM Editor (centre), with Petri Virrankoski, President of the Surface Drilling Division (left), and Lauri Laihanen, Vice President, R&D of the Surface Drilling Division (right)

Flexibility and optionality are the name of the game, with the rig equipped with a battery able to carry out seven hours of tramming or one hour of drilling based on Sandvik research, plus plug into electrical infrastructure with a  37-mm diameter, 180-m-long tethered cable.

Lauri Laihanen, Vice President, R&D, Surface Drilling Division, Sandvik Mining and Rock Solutions, told IM at the Sandvik Capital Markets Day event last week: “The main benefit of this battery-electric solution is the ability to tram independently for up to seven hours.

“When you need to move the rig after drilling a certain portion of the pit ahead of blasting, you can disconnect the cable and tram the rig away from the pit independently without worrying about managing the cable logistics. Then, when you have carried out the blasting and explosives loading process and are ready for the next drilling sequence, you can tram back without recharging in between.”

Petri Virrankoski, President of the Surface Drilling Division, added: “The application where these drills are used is somewhat different to rotary drills. To a degree, they are used in production drilling, but in a very dynamic way – carrying out pre-splits or blasthole patterns on smaller benches, for example.

“They need to manoeuvre around more, so there are more demands placed on them from a flexibility and cable management perspective.”

There are other potential benefits Laihanen talks up – the ability to carry on drilling or tramming during “black outs” and, on mine sites where cable-electric equipment is already used, connect the rig to the grid after diesel-electric blasthole drills and cable shovels have started up (to avoid power surges).

“For some of our frontrunner customers that have already adopted electrification on surface and have the infrastructure in place, they would only need to add one transformer to lower the voltage level from what their larger pieces of equipment are working off to start using this rig for drilling and tramming,” he added.

This type of talk – more practical than conceptual – is representative of Sandvik ‘making the shift’ when it comes to electrification in surface mining.

It has only been just over a year since the company unveiled its first electric concept rig, based off a much smaller top hammer drill rig meant for urban construction, but the understanding of what it may take to electrify these large rigs has grown tremendously.

“From a technology development and demonstration point of view, it is crucial to understand the framework that you have from the lower and upper end of the drilling portfolio,” Laihanen said. “This helps you track it with the customer base and finalise your productisation plan to hit that 2030 goal of having an electrified offering for the whole range.”

Eriksson says the company is confident in being able to offer electric surface drilling products across its range by 2030, with Sandvik’s continued advances in underground mine electrification spurring this on.

It is worth, therefore, noting some of the numbers that came out of the Capital Markets Day from the underground load and haul division.

Brian Huff, Vice President of New Technologies for the Load and Haul Division within Sandvik Mining and Rock Solutions, said the company had won more than 75% of the tenders it had been involved in from January-October this year, with more than 15% of the company’s load and haul order intake over this period representing battery-electric equipment.

One can also add sales of the company’s underground battery-electric drills, which started to be offered to the market from 2016, to these numbers.

The company’s Test Mine in Tampere, which IM visited last week, has played a key role in this growing Sandvik underground battery-electric population, and the recent announcement that Sandvik will look to replicate this on surface with the Sandvik Test Pit – some 40 km away – is another indicator of how serious the company is about becoming an open-pit drilling major.

Virrankoski explained: “If you look at the peak capabilities that have enabled us the successes underground, one of these is the Test Mine. This has been helpful for testing and developing not only the drill rigs, but also tooling, digital tools, automation, rock drills, etc.

“It became pretty clear about four years ago that we needed a similar capability for surface.”

This location just outside of Tampere was chosen due to the “good rock” availability, the ability to offer significant scale where the company could test out all boom and rotary drill rigs up to the DR413 class at the same time as providing customer showcases both on electrification and automation, the ability to cross-fertilise underground learnings from the existing Test Mine with surface drilling developments, and the continued development of existing and new Sandvik surface mining engineers.

The Sandvik Test Pit, which has previously served as a quarry, will be developed by its own drilling plan

The company already has multiple rigs, both boom and rotary, at the site – which is still being setup for testing – with the new electric concept rig expected to soon join it.

“The next action after that is to begin customer trials next year,” Laihanen said. “We have had preliminary discussions with several customers, but we need to finalise our own internal development testing before locking in these trials.”

This is indicative of the emphasis the company is placing on surface mining and the opportunity it has to shape the battery-electric conversation in the surface drilling space.

“For us, it is important to have a physical specimen to have these conversations with customers,” Laihanen said. “When you have something available, it makes the conversation around capabilities and limitations a lot easier, taking these discussions to a whole new level.”

Virrankoski added: “This will lead to a conversation around maintenance processes, the skills requirements, the service models, etc.

“Having a machine that can play in a real-life sandbox is very different to showing a model on a screen.”

Sandvik has laid its surface drilling marker down. The market will now decide if this is the direction it wants to move in.

Brauteseth Blasting continues expansion into South Africa with support of Sandvik drill rigs

Based near Port Shepstone on the KwaZulu-Natal south coast, Brauteseth Blasting’s success has evolved into a national footprint – and beyond – with multiple drill rig acquisitions from Sandvik Mining and Rock Solutions bolstering its production capacity across South Africa and multiple industries, including mining.

In fact, remarks Sandvik Mining and Rock Solutions Account Manager Andre Blom, Brauteseth Blasting has acquired units from every Sandvik boom drill range in a single year.

“This included Leopard™ DI550 and Leopard DI650 down-the-hole (DTH) drill rigs from our Leopard range, the Pantera™ DP1500i and the Ranger™ DX800 and Ranger DX900i surface top hammer drill rigs,” Blom says. The two companies have built a strong partnership since 2005, when the first Sandvik rig was acquired by Brauteseth Blasting.

Brauteseth Blasting began mainly in the civil engineering sector and in quarrying, but has now moved decisively into surface mining as well. Clive Brauteseth, Managing Director since 1989, points to the geographic expansion now beyond KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape – into Limpopo, Mpumalanga, the Northern Cape and beyond South Africa into Zambia.

By this year, the number of Sandvik drill rigs acquired by the company over the years has reached almost 50, and more acquisitions are in the pipeline by the end of the year, Brauteseth says.

“We have built a strong relationship with Sandvik over my 35 years with the company,” he says. “We have some of the best equipment in the market, and keep it well maintained and up to date; this means continual investment in replacing plant regularly.”

He notes that the quality and performance of Sandvik drill rigs gives Brauteseth Blasting the uptime and reliability that its projects demand, backed up by the experience and skills of its stable and committed teams. The ongoing upskilling also ensures the latest technology investments are put to the most productive use in the field – to deliver the bottom-line results that keep customers loyal, it says.

Of Brauteseth Blasting’s acquisitions during 2021 into 2022, the Leopard range is designed for high capacity production drilling in medium-sized to large open-pit mining operations, while the Ranger DX800 and Ranger DX900i drill rigs serve mainly the construction and small mining sectors. In between, the Pantera DP1500i rig is a ‘cross over’ for applications in quarries and smaller open-pit mines.

With the experience of almost two decades of running Sandvik drills, Brauteseth believes Sandvik Mining and Rock Solutions has the edge in this market. This is important for the way that his company embraces new technology to help keep it a step ahead.

“When there is new equipment in the market, we are always interested in what it can do for our fleet capability and our customers,” Brauteseth says. “I really value Sandvik’s continuous innovation, and the way they listen to customers when pursuing those developments.”

Blom highlights the unique partnership between the companies, where Sandvik Mining and Rock Solutions provides solid OEM support to enable Brauteseth Blasting to remain self-sufficient operationally and technically. More drill rig acquisitions are in the pipeline for 2023, as the company’s growth trend only gathers strength.

Sandvik Leopard DI650i drill rigs make first appearance in Namibia mining industry

Namibia-based KODO Drilling has taken delivery of the country’s first Sandvik Mining and Rock Solution’s Leopard™ DI650i surface drill rigs, which are set to go to work at an open-pit gold mine.

The rigs will be used as part of KODO Drilling’s down-the-hole (DTH) production drilling remit at the mine. The units arrived at the mine site in early November 2022.

According to Andries van Wyngaard, Territory Manager and Acting Managing Director at Sandvik Namibia, the contract is an important step in the company’s expansion strategy. Over the past year, its field service department has grown to seven trained full-service technicians in-country.

“As Sandvik Namibia gears up to support more equipment sales into the local market, we are grateful to KODO Drilling for their confidence in our innovative products and committed service,” van Wyngaard says. “With the values of KODO Drilling and Sandvik Mining and Rock Solutions so closely aligned – including safety and service excellence – this is a perfect fit.”

The DI650i, a diesel powered crawler mounted intelligent DTH rig, is designed for demanding production drilling applications in surface mining, according to van Wyngaard. The self-contained unit is equipped with an ergonomic iCAB operator’s cabin, fixed boom, dry dust collector and drill pipe changer – incorporating a modern design and layout.

“The rig comes with a range of new or redesigned components to boost its productivity,” he says. “It has the capacity to drill a wide variety of hole sizes from 90-165 mm. We have also run trials in Namibia with our RH560 hammer and we’ve seen exceptional performance – drilling holes from 115-203 mm.”

KODO Drilling Director, Vilho Hanghome, says his company’s progress is based on its constant drive to deliver innovative services and perform within a safe and environmentally sustainable manner.

“Having previously procured exploration rigs from Sandvik, we have valued the equipment quality and service we have received – as these have allowed us to deliver performance within budget to our clients,” Hanghome says. “We are therefore pleased to be investing in Sandvik’s state-of-the-art DTH technology and we will rely on their high level technical support going forward.”

Van Wyngaard says the contract shows KODO’s faith in Sandvik Namibia’s ability to support its DTH offering with aftermarket service. He points to the considerable interest the local market has shown in the delivery of the two rigs.

“After we signed off on the deal and sent the units off from our Khomanani headquarters in Kempton Park, many of our Namibian customers have noticed them on the road and posted excited comments online,” he says. “The mine where the rigs will operate is also looking forward to benefiting from the results of the new machines’ performance.”

Among the advantages the units offer is ground level access to all daily maintenance and service points. This makes for greater safety – as technicians do not have to climb around the machine. It also adds to productivity, as quicker maintenance means less downtime. Its silent and ergonomic cabin is a leader in the market, and boasts excellent visibility for safety and operability, according to the company.

Contributing to its low total cost of ownership are its intelligent hydraulic and compressor systems, which, it says, can deliver 38-42% improved fuel efficiency. Incorporating intelligent technology, the Sandvik DI650i rigs can accommodate scalable automation from on-board options to full automation systems.

Sandvik Namibia has made encouraging progress with recent equipment sales into Namibia, explains van Wyngaard, and he looks forward to a new era of engagement with both the surface and underground mining segments.

“Building on our long-standing relationship with KODO Drilling, we look forward to many more successful ventures with them and other customers,” he says.

Sandvik AutoMine open-pit drilling automation offering surfaces

Sandvik Mining and Rock Technology is taking its underground automated drilling expertise to the surface with the release of AutoMine® Surface Drilling.

A leader in mining automation, Sandvik has for a number of years been helping mining companies across the world improve productivity and increase safety with the use of its intelligent AutoMine systems for trucks, LHDs and underground drill rigs.

Even so, the commercialisation of the AutoMine Surface Drilling system marks an important milestone for the company in surface mining automation, it said.

The system is designed to meet customer’s challenges and maximise productivity and safety while increasing drilling efficiency. It enables mines to operate multiple Sandvik iSeries drill rigs from a remote control room miles away.

AutoMine Surface Drilling is available for Pantera™ DP1100i, Pantera DP1500i and Leopard™ DI650i rigs as well as Sandvik DR412i and DR416i blasthole drill rigs. It will be available for the recently released DR410i in the December quarter, the company added.

“This game-changing technology is the most advanced commercialised autonomous fleet system in the world enabling customers to reap the benefits of an autonomous drilling cycle,” Riku Pulli, Vice President Automation at Sandvik Mining and Rock Technology, said.

Like the AutoMine Underground solution, AutoMine Surface Drilling dramatically improves the working conditions and immediate safety of the operator while keeping mine personnel out of hazardous areas, Sandvik said. This reduces the operator’s exposure to noise, dust, and vibration and the hazard of working close to high walls.

Automated on-board functions enable iSeries rigs to work autonomously while the operator monitors at fleet level. Automated drill operation, accurate rig control and positioning increase the drilling quality and the overall excavation efficiency, according to Sandvik, thus ensuring higher productivity for the mine.

“We look forward to working closely together with our customers to automate drilling operations and unlock the full potential of AutoMine Surface Drilling,” Pulli said.