Robit’s Managed Service Contract at Endeavor mine: cost and drilling control for engineers
Reviewed by Joe Ashwell
First reported on International Mining – News
30 Second Briefing
Robit has taken on a full Managed Service Contract for drilling consumables at the Endeavor underground silver-zinc-lead mine, 40 km north of Cobar in New South Wales’ Cobar Basin. The contract covers supply and lifecycle management of drilling tools for one of Robit’s first underground sites in Australia using this model, shifting responsibility for bit and rod performance from the mine to the OEM. For mine operators, the arrangement ties consumable costs directly to drilled metres and tool life, tightening control over drilling productivity and budgeting.
Technical Brief
- Managed Service scope likely spans percussive drill bits, extension rods, couplings and shank adaptors.
- Robit’s on-site team would typically handle bit regrinding, change-out scheduling and scrap classification.
- Performance KPIs are usually tracked as drilled metres per bit, per rod and per rig shift.
- Cost model tends to incentivise longer bit life via optimised rotation, feed force and flushing parameters.
- Underground logistics benefit from vendor-managed inventory, reducing on-site stockholding of heavy steel consumables.
- Data from bit wear and failure modes can feed back into hammer and pattern design optimisation.
- For polymetallic stoping operations, consistent penetration rates directly affect stope cycle time and backfill scheduling.
- Similar metre-based consumable contracts are increasingly being trialled in Australian hard-rock mines to stabilise OPEX.
Our Take
Our database shows Robit has recently been stress-testing its down-the-hole tools in highly abrasive conditions at Kevitsa (nickel–copper, Finland) and La Arena (gold–copper, Peru), so a managed service contract at Endeavor likely leverages that field data to optimise bit life and hammer reliability in Cobar Basin ground conditions.
Polymetals Resources’ rapid restart of the Endeavor silver–lead–zinc mine near Cobar, following its late-2025 capital raise, suggests the operation is in a ramp-up phase where outsourced drilling-tool management can stabilise development metres and cost predictability while in-house teams focus on de-bottlenecking the plant.
Among recent silver–zinc items in our coverage, Endeavor stands out as one of the few Cobar Basin assets pairing a restart programme with a formalised tooling service model, which may signal a shift by mid-tier operators in New South Wales towards long-term OEM-managed consumables to control unit costs in deeper, harder orebodies.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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