Sandvik surface fleet replacement in Zambia: drilling performance notes for engineers
Reviewed by Joe Ashwell
First reported on International Mining – News
30 Second Briefing
One of the world’s largest copper producers has ordered 16 Sandvik D25KX down-the-hole rotary drill rigs to replace its surface drilling fleet at a Zambian open pit operation. The 2025 order includes Sandvik Remote Monitoring Service plus 12 months of on-site technical support, operator and maintainer training, and a dedicated spare parts stock. The package is aimed at sustaining high drilling uptime and productivity on large-diameter production blast holes in hard rock conditions typical of Zambian copper pits.
Technical Brief
- Package explicitly combines hardware, remote monitoring, training and spares as a single integrated support contract.
- Dedicated spare parts stock on site shortens critical component lead times and mitigates drilling downtime risk.
- Structured operator and maintainer training targets consistent drilling practice and reduced consumable wear across the new fleet.
- Fleet replacement via a single OEM simplifies interface management versus mixed-vendor drill populations at large open pits.
Our Take
Sandvik’s 2025 copper-linked deals in our database now span both African operations (this Zambian fleet replacement and the ThoroughTec Simulation acquisition) and OEM-agnostic training, suggesting Sandvik is positioning to control more of the full life cycle of surface equipment in copper belts.
For a Zambian copper mine, standardising on 16 identical DTH rigs from a single OEM typically simplifies spares and maintenance planning; the 12‑month technical support window effectively gives the operator a year to bed in new drilling patterns and reliability data before deciding on longer-term service contracts.
Across the 2067 tag-matched ‘Projects’ and ‘Product’ pieces in our coverage, Sandvik appears unusually active in 2025 with multiple drill and processing product launches plus strategic agreements (e.g. with JCHX and Atlas Salt), which signals a push to lock in fleet and technology choices at brownfield sites rather than waiting on greenfield copper projects.
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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