Our story – Celebrating 10 years of Strike Drilling
This year sees a notable milestone for the Strike Drilling team as the business celebrates 10 years of operations.
Strike Drilling was founded in 2014 by Richard Bennett, along with Clay Schmidt and Craig Chitty with a view to providing state of the art equipment and quality specialised drilling services to the exploration industry.
The company started small with three KWL700 rigs and over the past 10 years has acquired a total of 16 rigs that are operating throughout Australia. These rigs specialise in air core and reverse circulation drilling services to large and small clients in the minerals exploration industry.
Strike Drilling prides itself on being completely mobile and taking on projects in some of the most remote locations around Australia. According to Richard Bennett, Founder of Strike Drilling they started with the vision to always want to go where others wouldn’t.
“We pride ourselves on not saying no, taking on the challenging jobs and giving it everything – true exploration drilling. We came out with brand new state of the art equipment, a fresh approach to business and a lot of industry knowledge and experience between us which gave us a solid launching pad,” Richard said.
“With the focus on exploration we had a lot against us – heat, fuel, mobilisation, access and maintenance being a two day journey away at times. “You are only as good as your people. We created a tight and capable team that we could trust to travel to some of the most remote locations in Australia, do the job well and deliver for our clients. Being in the industry since 1986 I have met many clients who I now call my friends.
Our client relationships are built on a foundation of mutual respect and that has helped get us to where we are today.”
In 2016, Strike Drilling received the prestigious Department of Mines and Petroleum Golden Gecko award for environmental excellence for our X350 Track Mounted Drill Rig & Support Unit. In 2020, to continue our commitment to environmental sustainability we designed and built the Strike ‘Enviro Pod’.
The Enviro Pod is a watertight self-contained sump that captures all the outside return and drill sample spoils leaving no soil or water contamination in sensitive areas after the hole has been drilled.
After working closely with DDH1 Drilling on a shared contract basis for three years, Strike Drilling was acquired by DDH1 Limited in 2018. DDH1’s deep directional coring and Strike’s air core and reverse circulation capabilities are highly complementary, the combination of our businesses enabled us to offer clients the full suite of drilling services along with our sister companies Ranger Drilling and Swick Mining Services.
Clay Schmidt, General Manager and Founder of Strike Drilling said it had been an incredible journey.
“Starting in a downturn with a plan to have a three rig business. Within the first year we had a fourth rig ordered and it did not stop there. Now 10 years later we have 16 rigs operating throughout Australia on multiple sites for a growing list of clients.
This could only be achieved with a great like-minded team striving for a common goal. To be the “Future force in drilling.”
In 2022, Strike Drilling received ISO (International Organisation for Standardisation) accreditation for our environmental, quality and occupational health and safety management systems.
We pride ourselves on delivering quality services to our clients and this accreditation ensures the maintenance of all requirements in terms of quality, safety and the efficiency of our services. The last quarter of 2023 saw Strike Drilling, DDH1 Drilling, Ranger Drilling and Swick Mining Services become part of the leading global mining services company, Perenti.
The companies joined Ausdrill in the newly created Drilling Services Division making our combined businesses one of the largest drilling contractors globally. While this move does not affect our day-to-day operations, we are proud to be part of Perenti and looking forward to seeing what the future holds for Strike Drilling.