Peak Iron Mines Pty Ltd (Peak Iron), a privately-owned iron ore development, mining and exploration company operating in the North Gawler Region of South Australia, has leveraged acQuire’s new geological data management solution, GIM Essentials, to help improve decision making in the field.
Extensive field exploration and metallurgical test work are underway at Peak Iron’s Hawks Nest iron ore magnetite project in preparation for developing what it believes is the highest-grade magnetite mining operation in South Australia.
To support this, Peak Iron’s geology team manages a wide range of critical data, including geological logs, downhole petrophysics, magnetic susceptibility readings and assay results from advanced techniques like X-ray Fluorescence (XRF) and Davis Tube Recovery (DTR) to evaluate magnetite potential.
For years, prior to Peak Iron’s acquisition of the tenements, this field data was collected using paper-based logging methods and managed through spreadsheets – a time consuming and error prone approach. Recognising the need for a more efficient, scalable and reliable solution to handle their geological and drilling information, Mineral Resource Manager, Dwayne Povey, led the transition to acQuire’s new geological data management solution, GIM Essentials, for its next drilling program.
“Paper logging in the field was the fail-safe,” Povey said. “Each geologist was creating a spreadsheet for every drill hole. Then you’d have separate tabs for geology, collar data and more – before long, you’re buried in 15 spreadsheet tabs with no way to collate them. There was no single file to go to.”
Data validation on entry was also limited. “If there was a mistype, there were basic lookups in the spreadsheet but no real safeguards on surveys, collars, assays or geology entries,” he added.
Adding to the challenge was the integration of government-issued tenement data with many government departments still releasing data in older formats, including scanned PDFs, flat tables and digital files. This made it difficult and time consuming to digitise and transform data into a format suitable for a database, Peak Iron says.
Sample tracking posed another hurdle. Each week, the team dispatched as many as 1,500 samples to the lab, relying on memory and spreadsheets to keep track of individual drill holes.
Povey said: “We only prepare lab dispatches once a week. By the end of the week, we might have 1,500 samples, and the team often can’t remember the specifics of the first few holes. Some laboratories receive those 1,500 samples, but they don’t always send back a detailed sample receipt or confirmation. Then, some weeks later, when we finally get the assay results, we discover we’re missing samples from a particular hole and have to resample.”
These challenges made it clear: Peak Iron needed a smarter, modern solution to bring all their data together, simplify workflows and support faster, more confident decision making in the field, acQuire says.
Once the Peak Iron team decided on GIM Essentials, they moved quickly to get up and running in time for their next drill program.
“We quickly validated and migrated our data across for that program,” Povey says. “The first week came with a steep learning curve as the team upskilled, but we haven’t looked back since.”
From the beginning, the Peak Iron team had a clear vision of what they needed in a geological data management solution and, acQuire says, GIM Essentials allowed them to get there very quickly.
“You need a hole ID, a from-to, and a sample ID,” Povey said. “They’re the key fields of your data model.”
GIM Essentials allows Peak Iron’s geologists to log and validate data directly in the field, reducing errors from manual transcription and ensuring consistency from the start of each drilling program – improving confidence in the data and accelerating exploration workflows.
As a cloud-hosted and web-based solution, GIM Essentials provides Peak Iron with the flexibility and security to manage its data independently, without relying on external providers for access or data exports, according to acQuire. The result? Greater flexibility, reduced costs, and complete confidence in how its data is stored, accessed and shared.
Previously, the team dispatched up to 1,500 samples per week and struggled to keep track of individual sample details. With GIM Essentials that’s changed. acQuire said: “The platform provides a single, reliable source of truth where every sample is tracked and accounted for in real time. Nothing gets lost, overlooked or forgotten.”
And, instead of waiting days for data to be digitised, shared and interpreted, the Peak Iron team now works to make decisions in near real time.
GIM Essentials has also helped reduce the guesswork in the field, according to Povey.
“We usually know where to drill but deciding how deep to go needs experience‚” he said. “The younger geologists aren’t as familiar with interpreting geology and sections yet, so it’s being able to lead them. With GIM Essentials we can make more informed, data-driven decisions instead of relying purely on gut instinct.”
Improving data integrity and visibility, has also helped Peak avoid costly mistakes such as unnecessary DTR tests, Povey says.
“DTR tests are quite expensive, so we want to be sure we’re making the right decision before running them,” he added. “GIM Essentials has revolutionised our field exploration drilling programs. With GIM Essentials we now have a fully integrated end to end data collection, validation and management system. In the field we place a Starlink system at each remote drill rig and directly enter the drill logs and detail into the database in real time. A simple one stop shop and a huge increase in our field exploration productivity.”
Behind the scenes, Peak Iron continues the significant task of standardising geology codes and importing the previous 40 years of historical data from spreadsheets, paper logs and flat files. GIM Essentials equips the team with the tools to validate and clean legacy data efficiently, helping avoid delays from manual processes.