HIGH PROFILE
Mining an underground drilling niche
Having found a unique value proposition for its new
underground contractor business, Titeline is now
revolutionising the drilling sector with the help of robots
In looking to retain the mantle of Australia’s
safest drilling company while expanding into
the underground mining sector, Titeline
Drilling has found support from some of the
biggest miners in the world.
Titeline has long been viewed as a leading
surface mineral exploration drilling contractor
but, as David D’Astoli, CEO of the company,
explained, this type of work is subject to cyclical
exploration budgets.
“The rationale for moving into the
underground market was to try to get some
‘lumpiness’ out of our income stream,” he told
IM. “As you know, with exploration, it can be
pretty up and down. With the underground side,
our work is a lot closer to the production side of
the business; we’re doing grade control and
resource development work in long dated (four to
five years) contracts.”
Titeline was looking for consistency and
resilience even in market downturns.
To enact this change, the company employed a
new General Manager of Underground, Greg
Wythes.
Wythes, who had a background in
underground drilling in Australia having worked
at the likes of Newcrest Mining’s Cadia and Rio
Tinto’s (now CMOC’s) majority-owned
Northparkes mine, was aware of the pain points
the industry was feeling and sought about
creating a unique value proposition for the new
underground contracting division.
The contract the company bid on – and
consequently won – for MMG’s Rosebery mine in
Tasmania, Australia, provided just that.
MMG, in a blog post, explained that brief.
“When Rosebery was looking to award the
contract for underground drilling services in
2017, all tendering companies were asked to
supply a hands-free solution for drill rod
handling, in-line with our vision for an injury-free
workplace,” the company said.
“The successful company, Titeline, was the
only tender that presented a viable solution to
hands-free drill rod loading and unloading.”
Titeline – having fitted Boart Longyear rod
handlers to their drills that “present the rod in an
ergonomic position so the drill assistant can get
it and stack it away”, D’Astoli says – knew such a
solution could be developed, in theory, but had
to search for the right suppliers and solutions to
prove it could work in a real-world underground
environment.
The Boart Longyear rod handler, along with a
rig able to move and set up quickly, drill from +90
to -90 degrees and to depths of 1,500 m,
immediately proved productive at Rosebery.
“The brief was to ensure the drills on site were
performing before starting their hand-free
proposal, and, within six months of commencing
their contract, Titeline’s in-house designed drill
rigs outperformed the previous contractor,” MMG
said.
Yet, the company needed to automate the rod
Titeline’s drill and ancillary rod buggy carrier can drill unattended and perform an autonomous rod trip
handling process further to fulfil the brief.
This is where the potential of robots came into
view.
“These robots were already in the
manufacturing industry – which aren’t exactly
pristine environments – and were able to operate
without an issue,” D’Astoli said. “They were also
being employed on sea walls where they were
constantly doused with sea water and continued
to operate.”
Robot technicians were happy to provide
conservative estimates of only having to service
these robots every six months in the
underground environment, according to D’Astoli.
This provided the peace of mind that
maintenance issues were not going to knock
productivity off-line.
It cemented a relationship with a robotics
company in Melbourne, Victoria, not too far away
from its Ballarat base, and gave the company the
robot drilling brief.
Boart Longyear provided access to the drill rig
interface, the DCI control panel.
This year-and-a-half long process led to the
development of a world first for underground
diamond drilling: a drill and ancillary rod buggy
carrier able to drill unattended and perform an
autonomous rod trip (pulling the drill string out
of the drill holes and then running it back in).
Able to work in confined environments, and
drill 360° on azimuth and from -90 degrees to +
90 degrees in dip, the solution was presented to
a global audience at the Prospectors and
Developers Association of Canada’s annual
exploration event earlier this year.
Meanwhile, MMG and Titeline had started
commissioning the first rig at Rosebery, and one
of the world’s biggest gold miners
was putting the rigs through their
paces.
Titeline, which already has an
existing grade control and
resource definition contract at
Newmont’s Tanami gold mine, in
the Northern Territory, has
provided six rigs to the miner, two
of which are equipped with the
new drill and ancillary rod buggy
carrier. More of these robotic rigs
will be arriving at the operation
by the end of the year.
Modifications to these rigs
continue to take place, but the
three currently in place at
Rosebery and Tanami are very
much “producing”, D’Astoli
explained.
SEPTEMBER 2020 | International Mining 47