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Its 2026 plans include geological mapping, geophysical surveying, geochemical sampling and an initial Air Core and RC drilling campaign.

You still need experienced operators, supervisors, mechanics, maintenance systems, consumables, spare parts, logistics and somebody who understands what happens when the ground starts fighting back.

At Cylinder Exploration Drilling (CED), our approach to manufacturing, sourcing and supplying diamond drilling consumables is influenced by something rather important.

And your drilling programme is stationary because a relatively inexpensive component failed and the replacement is sitting in a warehouse 8,000 kilometres away.

At Cylinder Exploration Drilling, that's why we're increasingly focused on supplying complete turnkey diamond drilling packages, not simply individual drill rigs.

AI infrastructure and data centres are adding another source of demand. Yet major new copper mines are painfully difficult to discover and painfully slow to build.

Without good drillers, mechanics, engineers, supervisors, technicians, fabricators and support personnel, it's just an expensive collection of steel and hydraulics.

At the Kada Gold Project, for example, exploration during 2026 has included thousands of metres of combined RC and diamond drilling aimed at expanding the Massan deposit.

A productive RC operation also requires the correct compressor, drill string, hammer and bits, sampling equipment, consumables, spares and experienced operators.

CED can configure compressor packages around the drilling requirements, including mobile and tracked options depending on the project.

Diamond core drilling can reach considerable depths during mineral exploration.

CED can configure drilling solutions using compressors across approximately the 16–35 bar range, depending on the drilling method and project requirements.

Geologists map. Soils are sampled. Trenches are dug. Geophysics gets tighter. Targets become more specific.

A fitting that looked perfectly happy five minutes ago may develop a different opinion once the system reaches operating pressure.

Because here's the problem with buying an RC rig from one supplier, compressor from another, drill string from somebody else and whatever hoses happen to be cheapest:

alongside additional underground configurations including the UG400 and the mobile SFM7500 underground drilling platform.

Rather than designing one trailer for one fixed application, the concept allows the trailer to be configured around the requirements of the drilling programme.

So you've bought an Air Core drill rig. Excellent. Can you drill yet? Probably not. Because a drill rig without the correct compressor, rods, tooling, sampling equipment, consumables and spares is essentially a very expensive piece of machinery waiting for the rest of its friends to arrive. This is one of the most common mistakes when exploration companies start buying drilling equipment. Everyone focuses on the rig. Nobody gets excited about hoses. Until the hose stops the p

The CED100 can also be configured around different mobilisation strategies, including tracked and more portable arrangements depending on the project. That matters because shallow exploration isn't always easy-access exploration. Sometimes the target is only 100 metres deep.

Because stretching across Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Mauritania is an extraordinary collection of iron ore deposits, exploration projects and mineralised belts that could eventually turn West Africa into one of the world's most important iron ore producing regions.