Master Drilling sees new technology as company-changing

Master Drilling and its Italian contractor Seli Technologies’s borer can leave holes up to 5.5m wide. Picture: SUPPLIED

The mobile tunnel borer will be deployed in a seven-month pilot project at Northam’s Eland mine near Brits and, if it works as well as its designers say it will, a similar machine could be built and deployed at Northam’s modern and highly mechanised Booysendal mine, said Master Drilling CEO Danie Pretorius.

“There’s no doubt that if we get this right, the discussion in five years’ time will not be about our backbone raise-boring business but about how we are doing with our tunnel boring business, subject to capital availability,” he said. “If we get the funding for it, we could transform the business from a vertical to a more horizontal business in time.”

'The machine, which comes in small components to give it the necessary flexibility, is designed to bore and clad tunnels at a rate of more than 100m a month, three times the conventional method used in SA’s mines' Masterdrilling

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