PILBARA

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MINING | Indodrill AUGUST 2014 | Resource Global Network 135
Indodrill builds its own rigs
and provides exploration and
mine-site drilling services from
offices in Singapore, Cambodia,
Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia,
Myanmar, the Philippines and
Australia. Given its strong Asia-
Pacific presence, you wouldn’t
guess that drilling contractor
Indodrill is managed by a
through-and-through Scotsman.
With the group’s expansion into
the EMEA marketplace, however,
Group Managing Director John
Horne has had chance to do
business much closer to home.
Indodrill’s newest office is in Alloa, located in
the Central Lowlands of Scotland; it’s pretty
close to Kincardine on Forth in Fife, John’s
hometown. It’s this connection that led the
predominantly Southeast Asian contractor to
connect with the sonic drilling company that
would open the door to the EMEA regions
market.
John came across the Mulraney Group
in early 2013, while reading at home in
Singapore. “I like to keep up to date with
Scottish news by reading what used to be my
local newspaper, the Alloa Advertiser; and
one day when I was reading this on my tablet
I saw a story headlined, ‘Local Mulraney
Group buys Boart Longyear’s sonic drilling
division’,” he recalls.
close to my home village, it obviously got my
attention. I thought that I’d better check the
company out. Coincidentally, two months
after that I was visiting Scotland, so I went
and knocked on the company’s door and
introduced myself. It took off from there.”
The EMEA joint venture
Mulraney Group is a Scottish consortium that
owns a number of businesses, including Geosonic
Drilling Limited. To begin with, Indodrill
and the Mulraney Group formed a strategic
alliance through which Indodrill could offer
Geosonic’s sonic drilling services to its existing
customer bases in Southeast Asia and
Australia.
Almost a year later in May 2014, Indodrill and
the Mulraney Group took their relationship
further by forming a 50/50 joint venture that
became Indodrill EMEA Limited, managed by
the Mulraney Group from its headquarters in
Alloa, Scotland.
The Mulraney Group
provides project management, drilling staff,
warehousing and maintenance facilities for
the joint venture, while Indodrill provides
diamond and reverse circulation (RC) drilling
rigs, supplies and technical support.
“The greatest advantage of joining up with
the Mulraney Group in Scotland is that it
gives Indodrill a new platform from which to
expand into the UK, Europe and eventually,
the Middle East and Africa,” says John.
“Indodrill were looking into sonic drilling at
that time, and with this company being so
“Through Geosonic Drilling Limited the
Mulraney Group has secured contracts