Drill core is some of the most expensive material a mining or exploration company will ever handle. The cost of a single drill hole, by the time you account for mobilisation, drilling, logging, and assay, runs into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. The core that comes out of that hole contains geological information that can’t be recreated once it’s damaged or lost.
Yet for decades, the industry has stored and handled that material in core trays that were standardised, more or less arbitrarily, based on decisions made long ago. Different materials, different sizes, different weights, no global standard. And core sheds, as a result, have quietly accumulated one of mining’s more persistent and unacknowledged injury problems.
CoreSafe, the Good Design Award-winning product line from Australia’s Prospectors Supplies, was built to fix that.
What’s Actually Wrong With Core Trays
The problem isn’t immediately obvious to people who haven’t spent time in a core shed. But once you understand the workflow, it becomes clear.
Core trays are lifted, moved, stacked, and unstacked repeatedly throughout the logging process. They’re heavy when full. Traditional designs have sharp corners that catch clothing and cut hands. Many flex when loaded, making them unstable. Some arrive from the manufacturer already damaged. Others become damaged during use to the point where they can’t be safely reused, generating waste and replacement cost.
There’s also the longer-term issue of core preservation. With commodity markets shifting and analytical techniques improving, historical drill core that seemed exhausted of value can become newly important. Geologists are increasingly re-examining archived core for minerals that weren’t economically interesting at the time of drilling. Core that’s been stored in deteriorating trays, exposed to weathering, or lost track of entirely, can’t tell you anything. The value that was locked inside it is simply gone.
CoreSafe’s approach, developed over several years of consultation with industry, was to redesign the core tray from first principles with those two problems, safety and preservation, as the primary objectives.
What a Redesigned Core Tray Actually Looks Like
The differences in CoreSafe trays are specific and considered, not just cosmetic.
The base is flat, designed to work with conveyor systems and to slide cleanly on workbenches. That might sound minor. In practice it reduces the noise in a core shed and allows trays to integrate with automated or semi-automated handling setups. Ribbing on the underside prevents the tray from flexing when loaded, a point of failure in many traditional designs that compromises both stability and the structural integrity of the tray over time.
The rounded corners throughout the design are about eliminating the specific injury mechanism that generates so many core shed incidents: sharp edges catching on clothing, creating trip hazards, and cutting hands. Combined with side and end handles that allow for a natural, ergonomically sound two-point lift, the tray is designed for the reality of how core shed workers actually use it, across a full shift, repeatedly.
Inside the tray, a core support ribbing system cradles each piece of core and lifts it slightly off the base. This maintains orientation during transit, provides drainage, and prevents the kind of shock damage that can occur when core settles hard against the bottom of a tray. Finger access points at the end of each channel make it easier to remove core without it jamming against the walls.
The one-piece clip-on lid can be padlocked or cable-tied for security in transit, and the four sets of strapping guides on each tray and lid are wide enough for truckers’ ratchet tie-downs, an acknowledgement that core often travels on the back of a vehicle across rough terrain before it reaches a shed.
A Range Built for Where Exploration Actually Happens
CoreSafe produces three tray styles, each designed for different workbench configurations: the Ultimate (designed for end-to-end use, one tray per metre of bench), the SlimLine (for side-by-side use, three trays per metre), and the Grande (the longest in the range, with room for a full metre of core per channel plus space for markers). All three work with NQ/2 and HQ core sizes, and the Ultimate and Grande also accommodate PQ.
Beyond the physical form factors, the range includes material formulations for different operating environments. The Sahara formulation is loaded with UV stabiliser for hot, sun-exposed conditions. Boreal is engineered for cold climates, rated to approximately minus 30 degrees Celsius without cracking. Arctic uses a high-specification virgin material rated for temperatures below minus 70 degrees Celsius, designed for exploration in genuinely extreme cold.
This isn’t a product range built for a single geography. CoreSafe is distributed globally, and the tray formulations reflect the reality that the same company might be running programs in the Pilbara and northern Canada within the same year.
CASPER: Moving the Camera Instead of the Core
The second product in the CoreSafe range addresses a different constraint. Photographing drill core well requires consistent lighting, a controlled environment, and a camera positioned precisely over the tray. The traditional solution is a fixed photography station in the core shed, which means core has to be carried to the camera.
Core is heavy. Every unnecessary handling step adds injury risk and slows down the workflow. CASPER inverts the problem by making the camera mobile.
The CASPER system is a lightweight frame, under seven kilograms, that rolls directly over core trays on roller racking or works with flat-table setups and custom configurations including drill rod workbenches. The 60-megapixel camera, tablet, lighting shroud, and Core Cropper software travel with the unit. At 115-micron resolution, the images CASPER produces are detailed enough to be directly compatible with cloud-based analysis platforms including Datarock and Imago, which extract geotechnical and geological data from core photography using machine learning.
The principle is simple: it’s easier to move one camera than an entire shed of core. The execution is specific enough that CoreSafe customises each unit to the client’s configuration, using in-house CAD and 3D printing to accommodate setups that don’t fit standard dimensions.
The Quiet Economics of Getting This Right
Jessica Keast, the director behind CoreSafe, has more than a decade of experience supplying equipment to the mining and exploration industry. Her observation, repeated consistently across projects she’s visited around the world, is that organisations are increasingly focused on extracting maximum value from drill programs rather than treating core as a sunk cost.
That shift in perspective makes the quality of core handling a different kind of business question. The same core that was drilled and logged to assess one commodity may need to be re-examined for another. Core that has been preserved properly, stored in trays that protect it rather than damage it, photographed at high resolution, and catalogued in a way that makes it retrievable, retains the value it was drilled to extract. Core that hasn’t been treated that way simply doesn’t.
CoreSafe’s argument is that the core tray isn’t a commodity purchase. It’s the last line of defence for one of a mine’s most significant investments.
Image Credit: fgmcommunity.com.au
