Norwegians back flexible mineral core sampling solution with €1.1 million

Norwegian deep-sea mineral exploration company Adepth Minerals has received a NOK 11.7 million (approximately €1.1 million) grant from Innovation Norway for the FlexiCore core sampling solution.

Developed in partnership with Seabed Solutions and DeepOcean, FlexiCore will be able to core in sloping and variable terrain, at an angle from vertical, change drilling bits at the seabed, and take core samples on multiple locations without recovery to the surface due to its mobility.

The technology will be capable of performing both offshore wind and infrastructure surveying and preparations.

According to Adepth Minerals, FlexiCore is based on technology and equipment from land operations, where certain critical equipment components are replaced, and the equipment is “marinized” and adapted to operations in the deep sea.

It will be mounted onto the crawling Seabed Excavator subsea tool carrier designed for deep-sea operations down to 4,000 meters. The tools together will be electrically powered and remotely controlled from an offshore service vessel.

“Our FlexiCore technology will be able to take more and better cores on the seabed in less time. It will be an important element for realizing better knowledge-building based on a larger amount of data collected,” said Anette Broch Mathisen Tvedt, CEO at Adepth Minerals.

“Our ambition is to provide more data through efficiently core drilling of potentially economically interesting mineral deposits to gain a better understanding of their distribution and resource potential. The funding from Innovation Norway is highly valuable to us, and we expect to be ready for coring during 2022.”

Adepth Minerals expects that the FlexiCore will be used for data collection related to the exploration and evaluation of the mineral potential on the Norwegian shelf.

According to the company, there is already a strong interest in the equipment from research institutions and commercial players who see the technology as complementary to their own subsea technology.