Devico, the leading provider of directional core drilling services, has increased its capacity for the worldwide mining, tunnelling and geotechnical industry with more professionally trained technicians. The company has got the capacity to take new projects and is ready to support mining industry with their expertise in cost-effective exploration drilling.
Agnico-Eagle in Kittilä has used Devico to steer their boreholes to the targets for the last four years with great success. In addition to higher accuracy, the Devico technology has led to significant cost reduction since the total meters of drilling can be reduced considerably when making several branch holes from one mother hole.
Devico has cooperated with following diamond drilling companies: ADC (Arctic Drilling Company), Orbit Garant Drilling (Canada), Kati, Protech, Drillcon, Smoy, Styrud, Arctic Geodrilling (Norway) and E-Service (Norway) and knows there equipment and know how very well to secure a fast, easy and smooth start with a new directional core drilling project.
The latest success stories prove that Devico directional core drilling technology reach new record depth. Drilling project in Guyana with Orbit Garant was able to deviate and create directional core branches at a depth of 1,900 meters in NWL size this month.
In South Africa, Devico is working on a new approach to deep reef exploration. The issues with these types of mineralisation is the great depths leading to high cost of surface exploration, and the limitations with regards to hitting the mineralisation in a defined pattern with underground drilling. Devico and Northam Platinum has found a solution to this by drilling mother holes parallel with the reef and branching it off at given intervals. One by one the branch holes are bent 25° to 30° which directs them into the estimated location of reef. As core samples are taken also during the steering process there is no risk of losing valuable geological information at any time. After the first months of operation the drilling technique has proven highly successful and has sparked interest in several other mines in Southern Africa.