Danie Pretorius

UNDER the cautious hand of Danie Pretorius, an engineer through and through, Master Drilling has been going strong for 40 years. The share price is never likely to scale the highs and lows of the precious metals miners, but it offers more conservative investors broad exposure to commodities, geographies and a strong balance sheet. The excitement lies in the company’s focus on — literally — cutting-edge technology. Pretorius is important in the industry because his aim is to have mining move from explosives-driven, manual drilling operations to more efficient mechanised mining. This improves safety, reduces waste and speeds up development times. It could also make a major difference to costs.

Master Drilling has shifted its traditional focus on raise bore drilling for underground mining to providing services such as exploration drilling and mechanical rock cutting for open-pit mining. It has developed a mobile tunnel boring machine to excavate tunnels in hard rock environments, eliminating the need to drill and blast, and a shaft boring system that constructs vertical tunnels for underground projects. With African Rainbow Minerals, it has been deploying a cutting-edge technique, particularly useful in gold and platinum mines, for reef boring to extract material from narrow orebodies. A particular area of interest is the application of artificial intelligence.

While hailing from the conservatism of a privately owned business before Master Drilling listed, Pretorius is not averse to mergers and acquisitions. Recent deals include AVA Solutions, A&R and Konec. He said last year he was considering the acquisition of a competitor which would significantly increase the group’s revenues from raise boring.