Modern Mining September 2019

feature SHAFT SINKING AND UNDERGROUND DEVELOPMENT Master Drilling advances its cutting-edge technology Danie Pretorius. The development team with the Mobile Tunnel Borer at the test site in Italy. M aster Drilling has been working on the devel- opment of both the MTB and the SBS for several years and has invested several hun- dred million rand in the two projects. In the case of the SBS, it also has the IDC as a shareholder. The machines have been partly manufactured by TunnelPro (formerly SELI Technologies) in JSE-listed Master Drilling Group, thought to be the world’s largest owner and operator of raisebore rigs, has an ambitious vision – to mechanise both horizontal develop- ment in mines and the blind sinking of vertical shafts. The company introduced the two new machines it envisages undertaking these tasks at a conceptual level at the 2016 and 2018 Mining Indabas. Now, in a major step forward, it has built one machine, the Mobile Tunnel Borer (MTB), in its entirety and the ‘front end’ of the other, the Shaft Boring System (SBS).

Italy, a joint venture between Master Drilling (49 %) and Italian construction group Ghella (51 %). Based in Fochville on the West Rand, Master Drilling operates 149 raisebore rigs as well as a fleet of 30 exploration or ‘slimhole’ rigs in 23 coun- tries around the world. It has been listed on the

38  MODERN MINING  September 2019