Company History

Perseverance Drilling, Underground Pty Ltd is an Australian owned and operated drilling contractor that specialises in Underground Drilling.

Perseverance Drilling, Underground Pty Ltd’s aim is to ensure that the end product of any task undertaken is of the highest quality possible. Management and employees are committed to continuous improvement through being innovative, liaising with the client and also by means of industry best practices.

Perseverance Drilling, Underground Pty Ltd was incorporated in the state of Western Australia and is based in Kalgoorlie, where it has an office and extensive workshop facilities supporting drilling operations. Perseverance Drilling have operated throughout the state as well as interstate.

Perseverance Drilling was formed in March 1996 to provide a cost effective, underground contract drilling service to the Australian mining industry. It was realised that production drilling often takes a back seat to development activities, thus the company was set up to initially specialise in underground production long hole drilling.

By concentrating effort in one area, drilling, Perseverance Drilling, Underground Pty Ltd are able to offer a high quality, tailored service to our clients. Over the years we have developed and honed our skill set to become the premier narrow vein drilling company in the West Australian mining industry.

Perseverance Drilling, Underground Pty Ltd also has the ability and desire to be innovative in areas that bigger contractors have neither the time nor expertise to explore. Often as a request or enquiry from a client, Perseverance Drilling has developed techniques or equipment to solve a problem that the client is experiencing. Following are some examples of innovations that Perseverance Drilling has completed.

Laser Clino

One request from a client back in the late 90’s was to drill 15m drags in a 60° dipping thin vein ore body. The drive size was such that the only rig that could fit was a Simba H157. The drilling needed to be incredibly accurate, so a clino system needed to be used that fitted onto the drill rod, rather than the rail holder, as the electronic units do. To complete this job Perseverance Drilling developed their own laser assisted, user friendly inclinometer. This hand held inclinometer is now standard equipment on all Simba H157’s and it allows the operator to set up on holes, with both rotation and dump angles. Using this inclinometer, Perseverance Drilling, Underground Pty Ltd has successfully completed a lot of work on thin vein orebodies, often with dumped forward holes. In one particular case, producing “half the tonnes at twice the grade” than the client had expected.

Mud and Foam Drilling

A call was received from a mine owner, they had a high grade area of ore that they had to extract to continue the stoping cycle. The area was highly broken, as was a lot of their ore body. The mining contractor on site had declared the area un-drillable as they had just lost string after string in the ground. Perseverance Drilling set about developing equipment that could inject metered volumes of drilling foam and mud into our air mist system. The next step was to develop a system to use foam and mud to drill the ground. In the worst areas encountered, cement grout and gypsum were incorporated. Ultimately the extremely bad section was drilled and in doing this techniques to drill the other broken ground in their ore body were developed. These techniques have since been used in a number of mines that encountered broken ground.

Multipurpose Percussion and Diamond Drill Rig

Over many years Perseverance Drilling has had requests to provide small length diamond drill holes for grade control rather than sludge holes. One client offered a 12 month contract for Grade Control Diamond Drilling. The idea was to have a very mobile rig that could be operated by one person. The rig would drill repetitive short holes along a drive. It was decided to fit a diamond rig onto a Simba 157 carrier, something that had not been done before. The long hole drilling control circuit was also left in place and the diamond drill circuit was run in parallel. The diamond drill control panel hangs off the boom and can be removed. The control panel being at ground level also assists one person operation. With the two circuits still on the rig, it is capable of either Diamond Drilling or Top Hammer, long hole drilling, something that had not been done before. That is how the Simba 157 Multipurpose Percussion and Diamond Drill (MPDD) rig was born.

Perbolter

An existing client wanted to reduce the number of contractors and looked at combining their drilling contract with their cable bolt installation work. The cable installation had to be by mechanical means as they would be up to 30m in length. Whilst Perseverance Drilling had the drill rigs to complete all of the drilling, something was needed to install the bolts with. It was decided that the cable and grout installation system from the Sandvik Cablebolter would be fitted to a Normet carrier. The conversion was completed and is known as the Perbolter.