Industry News

Aussie coup for top hammer manufacturer

Drilling Tools Australia (DTA) is a specialist in the Australian drilling consumable market, offering down the hole and top hammer drilling equipment with corresponding engineered solutions to the mining and construction industry. The company is based in Perth, Western Australia, with 69 employees.

The debt-free purchase price of DTA was $66 million. Robit financed the transaction partly from the proceeds of its initial public offering in May 2015 and partly through new bank financing.

Through DTA, Robit also entered a two and a half year preferred supply arrangement for the provision of consumables with Ausdrill, which is one of the major mining contractors in the world.

The acquisition of DTA has been an important part of Robit’s global growth strategy. The Australian market is one of the largest for drilling consumables in the world. The acquisition enables the local production of high quality drilling tools in Perth, ensuring better availability and shorter delivery times of products to customers in Oceania and the Far East. Through the acquisition, Robit aims to gain new customers among important players in the Australian mining market. Before the transaction, the mining segment represented about 25 per cent of Robit’s global net sales. Through the acquisition, Robit will also further strengthen its product portfolio.

“I am very pleased that after a long negotiation process with Ausdrill we were able to reach an agreement in bringing DTA and Robit together, building company net sales close to $104 million,” Robit chairman Harri Sjöholm said.

“This step, together with our targeted high organic growth of 15 per cent per annum, will take us to the next level in our strategy.”

Robit CEO Mikko Mattila said: “By combining Robit’s global manufacturing expertise with DTA’s high quality service culture, we are able to service customers better and grow our business in Australia and south-east Asia.”

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Ron Sayers, managing director of Ausdrill, said: “As Robit is a renowned manufacturer of quality drilling products with an extensive global distribution network, it will be able to service Ausdrill’s drill consumable needs into the future.”

Robit is the first company in the world to develop a patented measuring system that can measure the straightness of a hole during the percussive drilling process.

The Sense Systems measuring technology is the result of an intensive, seven-year R&D program and is in operation with selected customers. Unlike time-consuming manual systems, measuring during the drilling process does not require an extra work phase. The measurements are available immediately after drilling a hole. A 3D model of the drilled hole in the drilling pattern can be viewed in real time.

When drilling in rock, the holes often turn away from the desired direction, and in long holes the deviation may be several metres. Hole deviation results in inefficient operations on a site, and in the worst case may create hazards. The new system measures the actual straightness of drill holes immediately, so the information can be utilised in optimising and charging a rock face.

Sense Systems raises efficiency in the drilling process by:

  • Optimising crushed aggregates through controlled charging and blasting, minimising oversized boulders.
  • Ensuring safe blasting without the risk of flyrock.
  • Optimising yield from the ore body by avoiding drilling into waste rock.
  • Increasing the overall productivity of the blasting and crushing process.
  • Cutting costs for fuel and explosives, and reducing downtime.
  • Storing all drilling data in a database to develop the drilling process.

Since the results are obtained immediately, it is possible to react to any hole deviation when positioning and directing the following holes. The system functions in all types of rock formations, even in magnetic ore. 

Source: Robit

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