Founded in 2022, Just Drill is a tooling and rig supplier serving the UK and Ireland as its home market but also supporting global customers. It partners with quality, mainly European companies that align with the founders' vision of being instrumental in supporting their customers' drilling projects.

The Just Drill team focuses on the technical details, supporting customers from the project tendering phase to completion. They also provide support and solutions for customers requiring same-day tooling.

The co-founders of Just Drill are married couple Adam and Laura Baker. Adam has a long career history in the industry, working for multiple respected companies while being involved in drill tooling design and manufacture and drilling projects that have taken him to locations all over the world. Most recently, prior to founding Just Drill, he held the role of vice president of the DTH product group for Robit PLC, a position which saw him responsible for the tooling product line, large tendering and management, manufacturing, technical and providing training. 

Laura left a business management role within the private sector, which she had held for 15 years, to join Adam and launch Just Drill. She said of her decision to back Adam: "I want to build a successful family company, and my love for leadership and management ensures the focus and structure within the company will make this happen."

Business partnerships

Indeed, it has been happening since 2022, when Adam changed his focus from the global for Robit to his home markets of the UK and Ireland. However, he kept his relationship with Robit, representing the Finnish company in his home country in addition to bringing together business partners he had previously had relationships with or first-hand experience with.

Our focus is on promoting innovative brands and new equipment

With Adam's technical knowledge and Laura leading on the company's marketing strategy, the pair combine their strengths to build positive customer relationships and bring to market brands that will benefit their customer. "At Just Drill, we are keen to partner with companies that share the same vision and excitement as ourselves," Adam said. Laura added: "We are several manufacturers' exclusive or preferred partner. The first company we partnered with was Robit (top hammer, down-the-hole and casing system tooling). That should come as no surprise here as Adam was part of the senior management team and has unrivalled knowledge of these products; on that basis, Robit and Just Drill were keen to move forward together to bring a new opportunity and option for the UK and Irish markets."

Product choices

Talking about the company's product choices, Adam explained that "our focus is on promoting innovative brands and new equipment". He cited the intelligent rig solutions from Geomachine as a prime example of Just Drill's philosophy. "Here's a company [Geomachine] that offers rigs for drilling from ground investigation to deep geothermal where projects have been completed at over 2000m deep."

Geomachine, a Finnish-based manufacturing company, has been involved with Just Drill since the early stages of its start-up. "A long history of ground investigation rigs designed for the harshest environment allowed Geomachine to produce and introduce the first 2000m deep rig specifically designed for low impact, small footprint geothermal drilling," Adam explained the importance of bringing Goemachine to the UK. He continued: "Not only this, Geomachine produces intelligent solutions, meaning the GM2000 rig is coupled with automated drilling and data logging equipment. After witnessing the capabilities of the first GM2000 rig, I knew that this equipment would be key to developing a scalable and low-cost deep geothermal drilling solution in the UK and Irish markets."

Innovative brands

Another example of the innovative brands Just Drill works with is Qmatec rigs. "We knew that Qmatec drill rigs would be a hit for our home market after our own hands-on experience with them within Scandinavia for the geothermal and construction market," Adam explained. "Qmatec rigs produced in Norway, formally under the Nemek brand name, are of exceptional quality, and it is no fluke that they are the market-leading well drilling and construction rig provider within Scandinavia. It's still a family-owned company, and a new factory is currently under construction metres away from the existing one meaning that rig production will be tripled in volume when complete.

"Just Drill and Qmatec have made the commitment that service and repair will be carried out by in-house staff, as we know that response time is key for our customers. What's more, the IoT remote rig telematics means that we can monitor, adjust and diagnose any issues from our office or the factory, further improving response time. We can also schedule the servicing of machines via remote monitoring, so that's one less thing for the customer to be concerned with."

Talking about the choice of business partners, Laura said: "Just Drill's partner companies all have a long history of production and are market leaders in certain markets. Just Drill is here to bring these technologies into key markets where the brands have been less known previously." 

"All our partners who we represent are long-term commitments, and we all share the same understanding that support and quality differentiate us and our partners from the competition. 

"All our supply partners have extensive experience in other markets, and some are also the market leaders. Due to this, there is a wealth of experience and support, even with brands that some of our customers may not be familiar with. This has been reassuring for some, and others have embraced the techniques and products. Some customers are happy to carry on with the same methods they have been using for years, others understand that they need to embrace the developments and techniques, and this is where we can support them.

"Our goal is not just for sales; our target is to share the knowledge and support our customers to optimise their operations."

Shared knowledge

That desire to share knowledge is one of the points that set Just Drill apart from its competitors, and it is an aim that can be achieved because, as a relatively young company, it is not saddled with outdated ways of doing business that are carried on because that is the way it has always been done. "Just Drill recognises the need to provide exceptional customer support and with a speed that is refreshing within the industry," Laura said. "Support is provided with exceptional speed from service to product quotations. We live drilling, just like many of our customers, 24 hours a day, seven days a week – the phone is never off, and we don't work regular office hours. This philosophy, coupled with our in-depth product and process knowledge, has allowed us to rapidly gain customers and be part of some large and exciting projects already." 

Adam continued: "We have been able to showcase our rigs and tooling with several customers on jobsites throughout Europe to share our knowledge and drilling practices from other countries. There's always something to be learned, and there's nothing better than building brand awareness by showing tooling or rigs in daily operation with long-standing customers of the manufacturing partners we support.

We are passionate about sharing drilling technologies that we have witnessed firsthand

"At Just Drill, we are passionate about sharing drilling technologies that we have witnessed firsthand and have been a part of in our background. We aim to provide not just an alternative for the current tooling or rigs on offer, we want to drive the industry forward by providing access to some of the latest technologies. 

"The whole purpose, of course, is to ensure the correct solution for the end drilling customer. This may involve improving efficiencies, reducing overall project costs, improving safety, or providing a more sustainable solution. This can be done with the current products produced by our partners or through the development and adaptation of other products. Although a relatively new company, the knowledge and experience within Just Drill is certainly not new!"

Just Drill's UK-specific product offering

Building on the desire to provide customer–and market-specific solutions, Just Drill has been fortunate to develop several rig packages specific to its customers' requirements. For the customer, this means operating bespoke rigs specifically designed or adapted for that particular purpose. This means improved efficiency and safety, allowing them to pass the efficiency savings onto their customers, meaning that they are even more competitive at the tendering phase.

Building upon this theme, Adam Baker, co-founder of Just Drill, said: "Qmatec works on this basis. It has produced such a variety of rigs and equipment over its 50-year history that it is able to quickly tailor base machines with a modular design to produce bespoke customer units.

"Outside of the rigs built specifically for individual customers, we have been able to produce two new UK-specific rig models from Qmatec and also put these into UK inventory for sale or long-term rental.

"The Qmatec 510 TS was the first rig we brought into the UK market – a multipurpose 10t pullback rig fitted with a Eurodrill RH 10x unit, allowing a simple change from percussive to rotary drilling. With a full-length safety cage, 2.7t crane, onboard generator, welder, and multiple pumps, this compact rig was very well outfitted to take on a multitude of projects. As with many of the Qmatec rigs produced recently, the 510 TS is also equipped with an external electric powerpack hook-up. So, if any customer requires the rig to run in a fully electric mode, then a separate power pack can be purchased, and the onboard Deutz diesel engine shut down. The beauty of this is that customers are able to provide a fully electric drilling solution but also utilise standard diesel configuration when electric power is not accessible.

"On top of this, the 407 TSX model specifically designed for the UK and Ireland allows for micro piling or 4m soil nailing to be installed with unprecedented reach and manoeuvrability even on the most challenging site or project. All designed to improve safety and efficiency, providing the customer with an advantage over the competition."

On the subject of bespoke tooling, Baker explained that "Robit has been a great example of how we are able to produce customer-specific variations. On one project recently completed, site access and layout in a central urban environment flanked by a river with challenging ground conditions meant that a DTH casing system was required. However, due to tight access, a smaller than usual air compressor was all that was available, but Robit was able to produce a bespoke system to our requirements utilising a smaller DTH hammer that still allowing the correct flushing and cleaning of rock cuttings from the hole. Not only did this mean the customer was able to complete the project with the equipment they had available, but savings were also made with lower compressor running costs and smaller diameter DTH hammers while the drilling speed was not compromised."

Following that successful project, alongside Robit, Just Drill is now offering the Steel Fist wing casing system for 219mm casings and a full range of wall thicknesses. Its system was previously reserved for larger drilling diameters, but through UK customer requests and Robit's development, Just Drill can now offer it to its customers. "The main benefit of this new sized Steel Fist system is the removal of the requirement for any higher cost ring system," Baker explained. "This means that on large-quantity projects where permanent casing is required, we can offer a low-cost system, which our customers are excited about.

"We don't just supply products from catalogues; we listen to our customers' requirements and develop new products with them to truly add value to their operations."