The stake in the 29-year-old business was announced as Norwegian business Devico is celebrating 30 years since owner Victor Tokle launched the directional core drilling system the DeviDrill. Over the years, Devico has built a strong agent network and service division across the globe, establishing itself as a world leader in the field of directional core drilling and survey instrumentation. The DeviDrill system alone has been used on projects in over 40 different countries, with the current wireline version allowing continuous measurement and core sampling during steering.

As Australia's exclusive distributors of Devico's downhole surveying products, Downhole Surveys' beginnings resemble a similar parallel to that of Devico. For founder and CEO Mike Ayris, the concept to form a directional surveying business began in 1989 when he was working as a draftsman on a Western Australian mine site and began testing the theory that all vertical drill holes are drilled straight. Just as Tokle was inventing solutions for what was a time-consuming process in steerable coring, Ayris sought out to prove that all drill holes do in fact deviate and consequently, Downhole Surveys was born.

Ayris has built the business from a one-man outfit with a film-based Multishot to an operation that now operates out of bases in Perth and Kalgoorlie. Now, Erlend Olso, CEO of Devico, envisions the purchase as the perfect opportunity to fast track such growth, suggesting that "Downhole Surveys great ability to commercialise new and innovative products and ideas will allow for faster time-to-market for new Devico products currently in the pipeline."