Air Drill Pty Ltd

Tuesday, 30 September 2008 00:00

Founded in 1969, Air Drill specialises in sales and service of air drilling equipment and ancillaries for the exploration, blast hole, mineral grade control and water well industries. Air Drill offers engineering skills, manpower and experienced personnel to service, supply, design, maintain and upgrade drilling equipment and auxiliary equipment used in the gas, mineral, oilfield and seismic drilling industries. Air Drill's History 1969 - 2008 The company Air Drill was started in 1969 by Ralph King, to rebuild three air trac rigs and 2 x compressors. A small workshop was rented for 4 months which ended up 4 years. Over the years Air Drill started renting out air tracs and compressors while taking in constant work to keep active when the hire fleet was out, work grew in volume and size. With the increased work load more staff was employed, Air Drill quickly out-grew the small workshop. Land was purchased in Bayswater (Western Australia) and a workshop was built thinking it would last for 10 years, in five years the land, workshop and office was doubled. Drill rig and compressor work increased in size and volume to the extent they had to move out to a larger workshop in Bayswater (Jackson Street). At this time Air Drills contract work expanded where they were doing major rig rebuilds that required some 11,000 man hours each at a cost of 1.8 million dollars. In excess of 15 of these machines were processed. During this time Air Drill carried out Mine site erection and commission contractors for drill rig and electric power shovels (in excess of 700 tonne machines). Air Drills major customers during this period were: Hamersley Iron Pty Ltd (drill rigs – shovels) Mt Newman Mining Pty Ltd (drill rigs) Robe River Mining (drill rigs) BHP Koolan Island (drill rigs) BHP Cockatoo Island (drill rigs) Goldsworthy Mining (drill rigs) BHP Koolyanobbing (drill rigs) WMC Koolyanobbing (drill rigs) WMC Kambalda (drill rigs - shovels) BHP Iron Baron (SA drill rigs) Savage River Mine (Tasmania drill rigs) Mary Kathleen Uranium (QLD drill rigs) Brandrill (NT drill rigs) Latter period of Air Drill operations – The natural progression of the company was to move from basically a repair facility to an equipment supply and manufacturing company. Air Drill secured national distributorships with several companies’ including: Schramm Inc USA – Drill rigs, drilling equipment and spare parts Hurricane Compressors USA – Booster compressors and spare parts LeRoi USA – Super Compressors Thunderbird Pacific USA – Drill rig monitoring equipment Foremost Industries Canada – Rod Handling equipment DiaSpan – Break out spanners and recently Matex Environmentally Friendly Fluids and Lubricants Further development work expanded the range of products to give the company a spread of income and a cushion during depressed market situations in any one particular area. Air Drill in 2005 moved to an even larger workshop in Welshpool (Western Australia), and works mainly at manufacturing and rebuilding Drill rigs while still selling and hiring Hurricane Compressors and selling Matex Oils, DiaSpan Spanners and other products. As well as manufacturing Schramm Drill Rigs Air Drill has a range of products which it now manufactures including: Automated Breakout Systems (used for taking drill rods apart) Rotary Heads Cooling systems Lubricator systems Engine / Compressor clutches Rod Storage carriers DiaSpan spanners Written by Ralph King, Edited by Andrew Johnson

Last Updated on Monday, 10 November 2008 07:33