Services — Drill & Blast

Drill & Blast Services

Precision blasting for underground development, production mining, civil infrastructure, and surface operations — delivered by teams holding the highest global qualifications in explosive engineering.

Overview

Jahkai's drill and blast division provides comprehensive blasting services across the full spectrum of mining and civil infrastructure applications. Our shotfirers and blast engineers hold the highest available qualifications in Australian explosive handling — a regulatory framework recognised as one of the most rigorous in the world. We design, charge, and fire in underground development headings, production stopes, surface benches, and civil infrastructure excavations with equal precision.

Every blast we execute is underpinned by computer-modelled blast designs, vibration monitoring, and post-blast analysis. We do not simply fire holes — we engineer fragmentation outcomes that optimise downstream processing, minimise overbreak, and protect adjacent infrastructure. This discipline is what separates experienced blasting contractors from those who treat explosives as a commodity service.

What We Deliver

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Production Blasting
High-volume production blasting for underground stoping and surface bench operations. Ring drilling and charging for sublevel open stoping, longhole stoping, and bench-and-fill methods. We design patterns that maximise fragmentation uniformity while controlling dilution and ore loss — directly impacting mill throughput and recovery rates.
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Controlled Blasting
Pre-split blasting, smooth-wall blasting, and cushion blasting for applications where wall stability is paramount. These techniques are essential in underground development near active workings, final wall blasting in open pits, and civil excavations adjacent to existing infrastructure. Our controlled blasting programs consistently achieve overbreak tolerances within design specifications.
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Secondary Blasting
Secondary breaking of oversize material in drawpoints, ore passes, and crushing circuits. We employ both conventional secondary blasting and non-explosive methods depending on the operational context, proximity to critical infrastructure, and ventilation constraints. Our teams are experienced in managing the unique hazards of secondary blasting in confined underground environments.
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Development Blasting
Drill and blast for decline development, cross-cuts, access drives, ore drives, ventilation rises, and escape-way development. We design burn cuts, V-cuts, and fan patterns optimised for the ground conditions, heading dimensions, and advance-per-round targets specific to each project. Consistent advance rates and profile control are non-negotiable in our development programs.
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Civil & Infrastructure Blasting
Rock excavation for tunnels, shafts, foundations, road cuttings, and pipeline corridors. Civil blasting demands tighter vibration limits, stricter flyrock controls, and more conservative charge weights than mining operations. Our teams have executed civil blasting programs on some of Australia's most complex infrastructure projects, including multi-billion-dollar tunnel builds in urban environments.
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Blast Design & Engineering
Computer-modelled blast designs using industry-standard software. Vibration prediction and monitoring (ground vibration, airblast, flyrock). Post-blast fragmentation analysis using photographic assessment tools. Blast performance reporting with recommendations for continuous improvement. We close the loop on every blast — design, execute, measure, refine.

Equipment & Technology

Our drill and blast operations are built on proven equipment platforms from the world's leading OEMs. We select equipment based on ground conditions, heading dimensions, and production targets — not brand loyalty.

  • Sandvik DL-series longhole drills — Production ring drilling in stoping operations, capable of drilling up to 54m in a single pass with exceptional hole accuracy
  • Sandvik DD-series development jumbos — Twin-boom and single-boom face drilling for development headings from 4m x 4m through to 6m x 6m profiles
  • Epiroc Boomer series — Face drilling and bolting in development headings, with automated drilling cycles and MWD (Measure While Drilling) data capture for geological mapping
  • Electronic detonator systems — Programmable electronic detonators providing millisecond-precision timing control, enabling complex firing sequences that reduce vibration, improve fragmentation, and minimise overbreak
  • Bulk emulsion systems — Mechanised emulsion delivery for underground and surface blasting, replacing conventional packaged explosives with safer, more efficient bulk product systems
  • Vibration monitoring equipment — Triaxial geophones, airblast monitors, and real-time telemetry systems for compliance monitoring and blast performance analysis
  • Fragmentation analysis tools — Post-blast photographic fragmentation measurement providing quantitative data on size distribution to optimise blast designs and downstream processing

Local employment and training

We employ people from the place the mine is, and we train them on the tools, in the mine, from offsider through operator to supervisor. We leave a trainer behind.

Training & Knowledge Transfer

Drill and blast is a discipline where competence is measured in lives — there is no margin for poorly trained operators. Jahkai delivers structured training programs that build genuine capability in local nationals, moving them from fundamental explosive safety through to autonomous shotfiring roles.

  • Explosive safety fundamentals — Storage, handling, transport, and emergency response procedures for commercial explosives and detonating systems
  • Charge-up procedures — Loading techniques for development faces, production rings, and surface benches, including emulsion pumping, boosting, and stemming
  • Firing procedures — Circuit testing, guard placement, exclusion zone management, misfire management, and post-blast re-entry protocols
  • Blast design interpretation — Reading and implementing blast designs, understanding timing sequences, burden-spacing relationships, and energy distribution
  • Electronic detonator programming — Configuration and programming of electronic detonator systems, including quality assurance checks and circuit verification
  • Vibration monitoring and analysis — Equipment setup, data collection, and basic interpretation of vibration records for compliance and performance assessment
  • Competency-based assessment — All training is assessed against defined competency standards with documented evidence portfolios, aligned with Australian Qualifications Framework equivalencies

We take people from the place the mine is, from assistant through qualified shotfirer to blast engineer. We train them on the tools, in the mine, and we leave a trainer behind.

Ready to discuss your blasting requirements?

From development headings to production stoping, surface bench blasting to civil infrastructure — Jahkai delivers precision blasting with the highest safety standards.

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