Strike Drilling started operations in the downturn of the market. Could you describe the reasoning behind this?

We started Strike Drilling three years ago in a pretty tough environment. We wanted to be able to hit the market with fresh gear as a strongly branded business so that companies could reply on us. Given that we launched on the off-market, there was a lot of new equipment out there that had been put on the shelf with no buyers. This allowed us to source our rigs at the right price. We positioned ourselves to be ready for the start of the next cycle. At the moment we have up to 45 staff, including field crew and lean back office headquarter. All of our energy is placed in the field. People want to work for a small, well-kept business.

We recently built a rig with Schramm, probably one of the leading drill rig manufacturers in Australia, and we were their first new drill rig order for 18 months in October 2016. Since then, they have received three new orders and new work is coming into their workshop for repairs and maintenance for other rigs. The market is certainly picking up. It was quiet in the WA market, but we are back. Since Diggers & Dealers Mining Forum in 2016, the market has really re-launched.

Strike Resources prides itself in taking projects in the remotest parts of Australia. What kind of equipment have you developed to tackle these?

When we started we introduces three large truck-mounted drill rigs with deep drilling capacity (700 m). We wanted though, to offer something different to the market, so we designed the X350 Track mounted Drill Rig to tackle remote areas that had been inaccessible before. The new model was created in collaboration with geologists, drilling engineers and Strike Drilling’s remote drilling knowledge. It is a cross between an air core rig and an RC rig, which has the capacity to drill up to 300m deep. We came up with the concept of a rig that could travel across the desert in remote sandy regions and near lakes. It can push past the rock on top, which is generally soft in nature, and push through into the hard rock which tells us what kind of material is in there. We also control water and salinity through the grader blade on our support equipment. Fuel-efficient drill rigs with a support unit that carry enough fuel for two weeks of drilling is one of the benefits of this model.

We believe that the X350 would suit well the Fraser Range region and we would like to be in full swing drilling in the next few years.

With the X350 we use a carrier called the Morooka, which is Japanese, and can move the rig at 15km per hour, on rubber tracks. Trucks leave big tracks which cause erosion, but the Morooka leaves zero footprint (6psi ground pressure), which is necessary with all the environmentally sensitive areas. The innovation was such, that the model won the 2016 Golden Gecko Awards by the Department of Mines and Petroleum.

What is the importance of the mining industry, comparatively to water and gas for Strike Drilling?

Mining greenfield exploration is our number one focus. We currently we have a three year contract in brownfield exploration with Goldfields, where we have two drills operating at the Agnew gold mine where we have the X350 machine doing the scout work and another larger RC machine following-up to dig deeper. We have three rigs currently working with Ramelius, with one of the X350 track machines trying to unlock unexplored ground. In terms of greenfield work we have our sixth rig heading to the Great Sandy desert drilling for Sipa Resources. We drill for any commodity such as gold, nickel, copper and vanadium. Another client of ours is Pilbara Minerals, where we will have two rigs later in the year drilling their lithium deposit.

What kind of government support is currently in place to assist explorers with their drilling operations?

AMEC is doing great work with the Exploration Incentive Scheme (EIS), which has offered many companies up to 50% of the funding on their direct drilling costs into the ground. Given that drilling is the most expensive part of the exploration business, the support is incredible for drillers, clients and shareholders.

Which are the main challenges for drilling in greenfield operations?

We have not even scratched the surface of the vast areas in the Great Sandy Desert. Since the discovery of the Nova nickel deposit, 100 million dollars has been spent in exploration to try to unlock another deposit without much success. It takes a lot of money to find these deposits and we can certainly make really good use of these schemes that are in place. We also need optimism in the market so that money can flow through to fund future exploration drilling programs. We would like to see the heritage and environmental constraints be eased for the explorations companies.