Innovation project I-EDDA-TC will establish a leading test center for drilling and drilling-related equipment to foster innovation in mineral exploration

This month, a new Innovation Test Center is set to start drilling to be used for mineral exploration testing in Örebro, Sweden. The Innovation Center will offer testing opportunities for different types of exploration drilling and data acquisition. The Test Center is a close collaboration between industry, research institutes and academia.

The new Test Center, called Innovative Exploration Drilling and Data Acquisition Test Center (I-EDDA-TC) will provide a unique environment for the development of drilling, and related equipment and methods used for the exploration of mineral resources, such as borehole geophysics. The goal for the future is to establish a leading Test Center that supports and creates innovation. The EIT RawMaterials funded Innovation project Innovative Exploration Drilling and Data Acquisition Test Center (I-EDDA-TC) is unique as it offers testing opportunities for various types of mineral and metal exploration drilling and data analysis. The Innovation Test Center is one of a kind in the world as it offers two boreholes each 1 kilometre deep with fully characterized core samples.

With the opening of the Innovation Test Center, we can continue our way towards building wolds unique facility and a competence center within exploration drilling sharing knowledge within the mineral and metals industry. It will create opportunities to cooperate with customers and universities as well as with researchers in order to drive and foster innovation and improve our technologies and products for the future.

Thomas Hallmén, General Manager of the Product Company Örebro, Epiroc Surface and Exploration Drilling division

Effective exploration drilling for mineral resources is an area where industrial innovation plays an important role. Despite this need, there is a lack of testbeds that allow the industry to actively test novel drilling equipment.

Bjarne Almqvist, Project Leader for Innovation project I-EDDA-TC and Researcher at the Department of Earth Sciences, Geophysics, at Uppsala University, Sweden 

The new Innovation Test Center offers companies the possibility to test in an environment that is well-known. Several drilling tests could be combined at the same time, which is cost-effective.

We hope that the new Innovation Test Center becomes a value-added facility for both small and large companies that work within mineral exploration drilling and related technologies.

Bjarne Almqvist, Project Leader for Innovation project I-EDDA-TC and Researcher at the Department of Earth Sciences, Geophysics, at Uppsala University, Sweden

The Test Center will be built next to the Epiroc Surface and Exploration Drilling division Production Center in Örebro, Sweden. The Test Center will be developed in the next three years and be available for customers at the beginning of 2022. EIT RawMaterials, initiated and funded by the EIT (European Institute of Innovation and Technology), a body of the EU, supports this project.

The new Test Center is a collaboration project between EIT RawMaterials partners: Uppsala University, Lund University, Luleå University of Technology, Technical University Bergakademie Freiberg, Deutsches GeoForschungsZentrum, RISE (Research Institutes of Sweden) and Epiroc Surface and Exploration Drilling division.