SURFACE DRILLING to fill those gaps. In addition, it is possible to grow our market position more quickly in crawler drills and their replacement cycle – often five to six years- is shorter that for rotary drills which are often in service for 15 years or more.”
On customer coordination Virrankoski adds:“ In one way or another I can say today we are working with all of the Tier 1 mining companies in the surface space in some way – whether that’ s rotary drills or crawler drills or both. So we are much stronger in surface than we were.”
So as things stand today, in surface drilling, is Sandvik where it wants to be or is there still work to be done? What is left on the roadmap?“ I think we are today in an excellent position when you look across the five divisions with an extremely competent and comprehensive offering in the surface drilling space. At the same time, of course, we have a very ambitious offering development roadmap – including how we can harmonise the offering more, and how we can improve our competitiveness and have a very sharp value proposition for our customers. And there remain a few product gaps that we are aiming to close. So I think we’ re going to have a very exciting next three to five years ahead of us in terms of what we’ re doing in the marketplace as well as in the offering development.”
One major strength for Sandvik is its bit inserts expertise – having its own state of the art carbide facility in Västberga, southwest of Stockholm, which is a hub for rock tools carbide inserts production but also serves as Sandvik’ s global R & D centre for carbide technology. It also has its own captive tungsten mine – Mittersill – in Austria.
Virrankoski adds:“ At a high level its also about the Sandvik philosophy, which is built around the safety, reliability and productivity of our solutions, including in surface drilling. Reliability is crucial in particular for drilling contractors who need maximum uptime. This has been part of our DNA for the past 30 years and more. Its in the engineering and design; it is in the selection of the components and it’ s the continuous improvement of the products. So we continuously seek areas where we can improve the products, make them more reliable, and make them more efficient. When we launch a new product we take often up to two years, working closely with customers to get it right through trials and testing. After commerical launch are make sure we are close to our customers through our 14 sales areas. If there’ s issues in the product or technology we want to know about it, we want to improve. And then you put on top of that, the digital and automation expertise This is a key driver for productivity and safety, not just an add-on. For example, automating drilling sequences, improves hole accuracy and consistency and reduces operator dependency. The drilling control system that we have allows stepped automation in drilling beginning with operator assist elements. In our surface drills, up to 85 % of our autonomy related features are already embedded on our drills. And even when there’ s an operator, he or she can utilise those.”
Having both rock tools and equipment manufacturing, Sandvik can optimise drilling systems in a very efficient and focused way.“ To us the drill and the rock tools are viewed together as one optimised system.
Then in 2023 we acquired our Surface Test Mine in Finland specifically to develop and prove future surface drilling technologies. This builds on decades of success and experience that we’ ve had running our nearby underground test mine, and we’ re able to leverage it as a tool to engage our customers, co-develop products and services and strengthen our competence.” He added that Sandvik also has large rotary drills there as well which provides the hard rock and AutoMine testing elements after soft rock testing near the factory in Alachua, Florida.
So with all this focus on the surface across the divisions and sales areas, is Sandvik’ s market share growing?“ Yes it is definitely moving in the right direction. Today you can really feel the surface focus throughout the business- it’ s not siloed in certain locations but is very much a global team and one global approach. We want to bring the full offering whenever we can to our customers.”
Finally is the surface drilling electrification roadmap evolving as expected?“ We already have cable rotary drills operating and we think that will remain the dominant technology there for the foreseeable future. In crawler drills, we already developed our battery electric concept drill rigs, and on that we are now in co-development with customers including a battery electric DI650i where we have shipped technology demonstrators to customer site, beginning with Boliden Kevitsa in late 2023 but also now at other sites as well across different climates and rock types. The first one uses battery operation for mobility and a tethered cable( over 180 m) for sustained drilling
Sandvik iE insights
IM also sat down with Nellaiappan Subbiah, Sandvik Product Manager, Rotary Drills to get additional insight into latest developments with the new iE series
Q In January 2025 you announced all iE series drills as available in electric. Are you now seeing an uptake in demand for electric versus diesel drills( you had previously said they are 20-30 % of demand) or is it more something customers want optionality for in the future eg via conversion? And is a lot of it driven by power cost in the specific region or market?
Since announcing full electric availability across the iE Series in January 2025, we are seeing growing and more concrete customer engagement around electric, although the split has not fundamentally flipped overnight. Electric is still typically in the 20 – 30 % range of near-term demand, but what has changed is the quality of that demand. Customers are now moving from curiosity to project specific evaluations, particularly where power infrastructure and energy pricing make a clear business case. For many customers, the decision is less about an immediate switch and more about future optionality. They want confidence that the drill they buy today is not a stranded asset. So, while diesel remains dominant today, electric is firmly embedded in purchase decisions, even when not selected initially.
Q Your drills are designed with conversion to electric in mind- have you seen a lot of interest in this specific capability and is that giving you an edge in the market- ie convert when you are ready?
Yes, the ability to convert from diesel to electric is resonating strongly with customers and is increasingly seen as a risk mitigation feature rather than a technical option. Customers value the flexibility to align with corporate decarbonisation targets that may not yet be fully funded; plus defer capital and infrastructure investment until operations are stabilised and respond to future regulatory or grid changes without replacing the base machine. This‘ convert when you’ re ready’ capability is giving Sandvik a clear competitive edge, particularly in long life assets like large rotary rigs where customers are planning over decades rather than years.
Q: What has the market response been to the level of modularisation you have incorporated into the new iE series?
The response to the modular architecture of the new iE Series has been very positive. Customers recognise tangible benefits in shorter lead times; simpler configuration and ordering; improved
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