JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – South Africa’s drilling provider across five continents, the Johannesburg Stock Exchange-listed Master Drilling, is well positioned to benefit from the commodity bull run, the shift in the market, and the global transitioning of opencast mining to underground mining in the short, medium, and long term, says Danie Pretorius, the founder and CEO of the 40-year-old original-equipment manufacturer, which has expanded beyond its initial raise boring specialisation to include comprehensive drilling services.

“If you look at our pipeline order book, it’s the highest it's been... so, I guess today it’s a matter of execution,” an upbeat Pretorius commented in an interview with Mining Weekly. (See attached Creamer Media video.)

Master Drilling's 2026 pipeline order book is at the $1-billion level amid the company's record 2025 revenue of $292-million and 71.3% higher earnings per share.

“If you take a step back and look at miners, they’re desperate for ways to access orebodies and service providers like ourselves need to try to develop those technologies, those systems, to help these miners to get down there ... and there's a lot of opportunity,” Pretorius pointed out on March 31, the day it reported a 57.2% higher operating profit of $46.5-million.

Interestingly, Master Drilling is currently advancing what will be the largest and longest raise-bore hole ever drilled in the world. This is being done at Northam Platinum's Zonderiende platinum group metals (PGMs) mine in South Africa’s Limpopo province.

Backing up the dominant 83% raise boring business pillar of the multi-pillared Master Drilling are digitalisation and smart mining at 11%, slim drilling at 4%, and mechanical rock excavation and cutting at 2%.

As mines deepen and become more complex, the autonomous technology that Master Drilling is taking steps to provide is expected to become a future differentiator.

Of the next-generation machines, the blind hole machine has been mobilised to Chile and during the last year, AI has been used for predictive maintenance, fault finding and drill parameter optimisation while drilling is taking place.

When Mining Weekly last spoke to Master Drilling, three major developments that have the potential to move the needle for mining, were highlighted. One of them was what you described as your “ready-made new shaft boring system, or SBS” that points to drilling a shaft to depth in half the time. Has that succeeded in moving the needle yet?

We've completed phase one. We've actually commissioned the machine outside of our works on a farm, and we've hit most of those key performance indicators (KPIs). We’re now moving into phase two. Most of the plan is being ordered, and we hope in the second half of the year to receive the hardware and to commission the second phase of this equipment late this year, early 2027. So, we hope to have this machine deployed on a project somewhere in 2027 if we hit all the KPIs in the next phase. But certainly exciting stuff, and a nice tool to have in the box for the miners to get quicker access to their orebodies.

The second potential needle-mover mentioned was a mobile tunnel borer, or MTB, machine that was described as paving the way for the third needle-mover – a narrow-reef rock cutter that was expected to maximise extraction and minimise waste from an orebody that was currently not economically viable using conventional mining methods. How’s the MTB going?

We commissioned the machine the end of last year at the Bokoni site. We're doing the project in collaboration with African Rainbow Minerals (ARM), and it's early days. We’re ramping up production as we speak, but, again, once we can get this fully operational, we expect a lot of interest from the industry to use the MTB-type tunnel boring system for access to orebodies. We believe in the next reporting period, we’ll give you more info and data and share with you more info on the progress made, but certainly we believe it’s a critical tool to have in the box for the miners and for a company like ourselves.

How’s the narrow-reef cutting advancer doing and is it halving the development of a mine, for example, ensuring that what would conventionally be a 600 000 t mine is a 300 000 t mine – but with the same number of ounces produced?

The focus here is on dilution and safety. The way the machine has been designed, just about no people will go into stope areas, which is one of those high-risk areas in mining today and you’re spot on with the dilution. Not only will we focus on the reef cutting with less waste development, but also the downstream upside of transporting less ore, much smaller plant, less energy being used. The machine was commissioned last year in our works. We were simulating the project close to our works. It’s being moved to site as we speak, and we hope to hit the tar running early in 2027 on a project at Bokoni mine.

ARM reported at its latest results presentation that Master Drilling is involved with the providing of a narrow-reef cutting solution to access premium-grade but very narrow UG2 reef at the Bokoni PGMs project, which is targeted for completion in this half of 2026. How well is Master Drilling doing on this?

We’re mobilising as we speak and this project will be commissioned during the latter part of this year, early next year, so it's early days to report on the actual performance. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let's get the machine to site, commission the machine, and we’ll report back in the next reporting period on its performance.

South Africa’s Northam Platinum reported at its latest results presentation that Master Drilling is operating as a raise-bore drilling contractor at its Western Extension Project at the Zondereinde PGMs mine. Tell us about that.

We were awarded three shafts to round about 1 300 m to 1 350 m to be raise-bored. The first hole was completed like two years ago. We’re about two months away for completing the second shaft and we’ve just started reaming the last of the three shafts. That shaft goes down to about 1 530 m, with a 5.5 m diameter, and this will be the largest, longest raise bore hole drilled to date in the world. So, very exciting stuff and for Northam to challenge the status quo and the way mining and shafts have been done, I need to compliment the management. So far, I think it’s a very successful project, and certainly for the miners a much quicker and safer way to access orebodies.

Exploration is not on South Africa’s radar in the way it should be and some are hoping that it will be at some stage, but where in the world is Master Drilling currently involved with exploration?

Back home, as we all know, the exploration trend declined in the last ten years from around $500-million to $600-million to about $100-million. But in terms of exploration worldwide, there’s a lot of opportunity. We're setting up an office in Namibia, as we speak. There’s a lot of opportunity in the uranium space in Namibia and north of the Limpopo river, up in Africa, with the gold miners. That's work in progress, and certainly one of the top priorities of our exploration division is to geographically expand the exploration business internationally, north of Limpopo and elsewhere in the world.

DIGITAL VENTURES

Beyond its core technologies, Master Drilling has invested in digital ventures encompassing proximity detection solutions and integrated data and resource management systems specifically designed for mining operations.

Exceptional financial growth was achieved in South Africa in 2025, which is expected to continue in 2026.