Mali Is Opening the Ground Again. CED Wants to Help Drill It.
Friday Global Expansion | Mali | West Africa
Ghana. 🇬🇭
Côte d’Ivoire. 🇨🇮
Senegal. 🇸🇳
Now we're heading inland.
🇲🇱 Mali.
And this isn't exactly a quiet exploration market.
Mali has gold.
Lots of it.
It has producing mines, established gold belts, advanced development projects and huge areas of prospective ground.
More importantly for CED:
It has drill rigs turning.
RC.
Diamond.
Resource expansion.
Greenfield exploration.
Near-mine drilling.
And after a difficult period for exploration permitting, licences are moving again.
For us, that makes Mali very difficult to ignore.
Because CED isn't following flags around West Africa.
We're following the metres.
Mali Is Already Putting Serious Metres in the Ground
Let's start with something extremely current.
At the Sanankoro Gold Project in southern Mali, an ongoing 2026 drilling campaign is targeting extensions to known deposits alongside near-mine greenfield targets.
The wider programme includes more than 12,000 metres of RC and diamond drilling.
And results released this week from the Selin deposit covered 21 RC holes totalling 3,748 metres.
The important bit?
Drilling has extended mineralisation beyond the existing resource model.
That's what exploration drilling is supposed to do.
Take what you think you know.
Put holes around it.
And discover that the geology has other ideas.
Then There's Kobada
Elsewhere in southern Mali, serious RC metreage has also been going into the ground.
Recent work at the Kobada Gold Project included a 108-hole, 19,138-metre RC drilling programme at the Foroko satellite deposit.
That's nearly twenty kilometres of drilling.
At one satellite target.
Again, this isn't somebody wandering around with a geological hammer wondering whether Mali might contain some gold.
This is serious exploration and resource-definition drilling.
And serious drilling programmes need serious support.
Mali Is Exactly the Sort of Market CED Is Built For
There's a tendency in drilling equipment sales to start with the machine.
We think that's backwards.
Start with the programme.
What are you drilling?
How deep?
What diameter?
What ground?
How many metres?
How quickly?
How remote?
Then choose the equipment.
Mali can require everything from relatively shallow reconnaissance drilling through to RC resource programmes and deeper diamond holes.
Different holes.
Different equipment.
Different logistics.
Same objective: keep putting useful metres in the ground.
RC Drilling Has a Big Role to Play
If you're trying to define gold mineralisation quickly, RC can be brutally effective.
Fast metreage.
Representative samples.
Efficient resource drilling.
Excellent for many gold exploration programmes.
But RC comes with one enormous catch:
Air.
An RC rig without sufficient air is basically an expensive conversation piece.
Pressure matters.
Volume matters.
Hole diameter matters.
Depth matters.
Groundwater matters.
Hammer selection matters.
And the deeper or more difficult the hole becomes, the more important compressor sizing becomes.
CED manufactures dedicated RC drilling systems including the CEDRC100, CEDRC200 and CEDRC450.
But we don't want to sell the rig in isolation.
Rig + Compressor + Drill String + Everything Else
A proper RC package can include:
RC drill rig.
High-pressure compressor.
Additional compressor where required.
RC drill rods.
Inner tubes.
Hammers.
Bits.
Cyclone.
Sample equipment.
Hoses.
Lubricators.
Manifolds.
Critical spares.
Tools.
Commissioning.
Training.
And support.
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:
Eventually everything arrives on site.
And then somebody has to make it work.
CED would rather solve that problem before the containers leave.
Then the Geology Demands Core
RC tells you a lot.
But sometimes you need more.
You need structure.
Orientation.
Contacts.
Alteration.
Veining.
Geotechnical information.
Recovery.
You want to physically see the rock.
That's where diamond drilling takes over.
CED manufactures diamond drilling rigs across a broad range of capacities — from compact exploration equipment through to larger systems for substantially deeper holes.
PQ.
HQ.
NQ.
Different programmes require different configurations.
And once again:
We don't start with the rig.
We start with the hole.
Mali Also Has a Mobility Problem
Look at a map.
Mali is enormous.
Exploration licences can be remote.
Temperatures are unforgiving.
Distances are serious.
Roads aren't always roads.
Fuel needs moving.
Water needs moving.
Rods need moving.
Consumables need moving.
Crews need moving.
Mechanical support needs moving.
And geological targets have an annoying habit of appearing exactly where logistics teams would prefer them not to.
This is why CED is becoming increasingly obsessed with mobile exploration systems.
Enter the SFM Series
The CED SFM Series is our answer to a simple question:
What if the exploration fleet was designed to move together?
Not just the rig.
Everything.
The SFM7200 handles surface diamond drilling.
The SFM7300 is designed around RC, Air Core and auger exploration.
The SFM7600 supports the drilling operation.
And the SFMTS modular trailer system can carry equipment such as consumables, fuel, water, drilling equipment and other field support.
The concept is simple:
Rig moves.
Support moves.
Consumables move.
Exploration keeps moving.
For remote African exploration, that's a very interesting proposition.
Don't Forget the Consumables
Drilling companies love talking about rigs.
Until they run out of bits.
Or rods.
Or core lifters.
Or reamers.
Or drilling mud.
Or a tiny spare part worth a few hundred dollars stops a machine worth hundreds of thousands.
Then suddenly consumables become extremely interesting.
CED can supply complete consumable inventories for diamond, RC and Air Core drilling.
And importantly, we can size those inventories around expected metreage.
5,000 metres?
Fine.
10,000?
Fine.
20,000?
Let's build the package accordingly.
The objective isn't to fill a container with random drilling equipment.
It's to give the programme what it actually needs.
Remote Projects Need Spares
Before They Need Spares
This sounds obvious.
It isn't.
The worst time to order a critical spare is when the rig is already broken.
Especially when you're operating somewhere remote.
CED can build preventative-maintenance and critical-spares packages around the equipment being supplied.
Filters.
Seals.
Hoses.
Wear components.
Hydraulic components.
Service items.
Drilling consumables.
The boring stuff.
The stuff nobody photographs.
The stuff that keeps rigs drilling.
And Equipment Still Needs People
You can buy the best drilling equipment on earth.
Somebody still needs to operate it.
CED can provide experienced:
Drillers.
Supervisors.
Mechanical fitters.
We can provide commissioning.
Training.
Technical support.
Operations management.
And where the project suits our capabilities, we can discuss contract drilling and managed drilling programmes.
That is increasingly important to how we're building CED.
We're not trying to become a catalogue with a warehouse attached.
We're building a drilling business capable of supplying the equipment, consumables and operational capability behind the programme.
Mali's Exploration Environment Is Moving Again
There's another reason this Friday matters.
Exploration permitting in Mali has been through a difficult period.
But movement has returned.
Recent government decisions have renewed multiple exploration permits across major mining regions, including gold licences.
That doesn't magically remove every regulatory or operating challenge.
Mali remains a market where companies need to understand the commercial, political, logistical and operational environment properly.
But from a drilling perspective, renewed licences mean something very straightforward:
Ground needs testing.
And testing ground means drilling.
Exploration Success Creates More Drilling
This is the bit people sometimes miss.
A successful hole doesn't end a drilling programme.
It creates another one.
Discovery drilling becomes step-out drilling.
Step-out drilling becomes resource drilling.
Resource drilling becomes infill.
Then geotechnical holes.
Water monitoring.
Mine development.
Near-mine exploration.
Underground targets.
Satellite deposits.
One successful exploration campaign can create years of additional drilling demand.
That's why CED isn't interested only in selling equipment into the next campaign.
We want to support the drilling lifecycle.
Why Mali? Why CED? Why Now?
Because RC programmes are active.
Because diamond drilling is active.
Because resource expansion is happening.
Because projects are progressing.
Because exploration permits are moving again.
And because Mali sits directly inside the West African gold exploration corridor CED is deliberately targeting.
Look at the last four Fridays.
🇬🇭 Ghana.
🇨🇮 Côte d’Ivoire.
🇸🇳 Senegal.
🇲🇱 Mali.
There's a pattern forming.
West Africa is drilling.
CED wants to be part of it.
Planning Exploration Drilling in Mali?
Don't send us:
"Need price for drill rig."
Give us the useful stuff.
Commodity?
RC or diamond?
Target depth?
Hole diameter?
Expected metreage?
Ground conditions?
Single or double shift?
How remote?
What equipment is already available?
Do you need compressors?
Consumables?
Spares?
Personnel?
Operational support?
Give us the drilling problem.
We'll build backwards from there.
Rig.
Compressor.
Drill string.
Consumables.
Spares.
Support equipment.
Personnel.
Training.
Operations.
Give us the target. Give us the depths. Give us the metres.
We'll work backwards from the hole.
Mali Is Drilling for More Gold.
CED Wants to Help Put the Holes in the Ground.
Cylinder Exploration Drilling
Diamond. RC. Air Core. Compressors. Consumables. Personnel. Complete drilling packages.
Built for exploration. Ready for West Africa.
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