Has Swick ever shown any interest in autonomous drills?
In short, yes. They have been automating drilling and reducing manpower for some years. Focus I believe has been on (a) allowing drills to continue to operate during blasting, when people are cleared from mine (b) reducing manning.
I believe automation of diamond coring rigs is different than production rigs (for example). Diamond drilled rock core is retrieved and logged (which requires manning at this stage) vs a production drill which may be instructed to drill a sequence of holes in rock ready for blasting.
In regards management, Kent Swick over promising and under delivering isn’t a good look no matter how prudent he is... I wonder why he has done this ?
No idea. Seems to be an ongoing theme which does shake confidence in forward looking statements. Only results speak.
The unsuccessful business development overseas isn’t a good sign either...even if some locations have now come good.
Regards business development I saw on the management page https://swickmining.com/our-company/board-and-senior-management/ Brendan O’Shea became ‘Business Development Officer’ in 2017.
They seem to be more measured nowdays and have lower international overheads. They carried a North American operations manager for a long time with pretty poor outcomes. He left maybe 18-24 months ago. Things are improving. Maybe a link, maybe not.
Regarding Orexplore technology... I wonder why it hasn’t been taken up by more companies since It arrived in late February 2018 https://orexplore.com/orexplores-house-lab-taking-client-projects/ ? Is Saturn the only one?
They have 7 paying clients apparently. Gold Road Resources are a bigger one in Aus, plus a couple of smaller explorers.
Their rates are not cheap for paying customers (rack rate AUD$100 per metre of core, discounted if there is volume) as they have a unique product. Compare with the less-good but cheaper XRF options such as Minalyze which are circa AUD$22/m.