SUPPLIERS’ NEWS ROUNDUP

Drilling suppliers Boart Longyear and Layne Christensen say a recent deal between the two firms, in which each will supply the other with drilling equipment it does not manufacture, is a sign of the times.

The agreement comes at a time when clients for suppliers offering similar equipment are less abundant than they were as a few years ago. Layne Christensen’s exploration drilling division incurred a loss of $3.7 million between the third quarters of 1998 and 1999. The loss is attributed to decreased activity in the mining sector.

According to the agreement, the partners will concentrate on their core businesses. Kansas-based Layne Christensen will continue to manufacture hydraulic surface core drills and pumps, whereas North Bay, Ont.-based Boart Longyear will still make core barrels, drill rods and accessories. The companies will then supply each other with equipment it does not make.

The firms are considering similar steps to combine their lines of geotechnical and environmental drilling equipment.

Geophysical surveyor Val d’Or Sagax has accepted a takeover bid from Toronto-based Intelligent Detection Systems (IDS). The proposal would expand IDS’s own geophysical surveying subsidiary, Scintrex.

No dollar figure was attached to the deal. IDS’s primary business is the manufacturing of detection equipment used by law enforcement and in power generation, but the company has been beefing up its geophysical division. In October 1999, it snapped up Micro-G Solutions, a Colorado-based maker of gravity meters.

Sagax has 21 geophysicists and 20 technicians on staff, with offices in Mali, Burkina Faso, Morocco, Mexico, Bolivia and Canada.

Heavy-machinery manufacturer P&H Mining Equipment will expand its operations at Elko, Nev., by building a 32,000-sq.-ft. repair centre and warehouse to service equipment used at mines in the area.

The shop will be equipped with a 50-ton overhead crane, and work there will include welding and fabrication of shovel dippers, buckets and truck bodies. Equipment built by P&H and other manufacturers will be serviced at the building, construction of which is expected to be finished in March.