Devico is the Trondheim company that invented steerable diamond core drilling for mineral exploration: founder Viktor Tokle left the SINTEF research institute in 1988 to commercialise the DeviDrill directional core-drilling system, and the group now sells drilling services, core-orientation and borehole-survey instruments from Heimdal, Trondheim, with around 200 staff across some 15 countries. Since 2023 it has been owned by the Australian mining-technology group Imdex. Its operating company, Devico International Operation AS, keeps a registered Portuguese branch in Lisbon, classified for drilling and boring, that has filed accounts for 2024.
Devico’s product is a solution to a specific exploration problem: a conventional diamond-drill hole follows the rock, and when the target is deep or the geometry awkward the driller either accepts the deviation or starts a new hole from surface. DeviDrill steers the core barrel while drilling, so one collar can fan out into several branches and reach targets at a fraction of the metres. The company sells this as a service, with its own crews and rigs, and as instruments — the DeviGyro survey tool and the DeviCore orientation system — that other drilling contractors run. Founded by Viktor Tokle in 1988 after his research at SINTEF, it grew into a group of around 200 people before Imdex, the Perth-listed mining-technology company, bought it in 2023 to add directional drilling and gyro surveying to its own sensor and software range.
The Portuguese branch is the operating company’s vehicle for contracts in the country: Devico International Operation AS – Sucursal em Portugal is registered in Lisbon under the drilling-and-boring code and has filed Portuguese accounts for 2024. Portugal is one of the few active exploration jurisdictions in western Europe — the Neves-Corvo copper-zinc mine, the Iberian Pyrite Belt, the lithium belts of the north and the Aljustrel and Panasqueira districts all keep drilling contractors busy — and directional core drilling is used both by mine operators drilling from underground and by explorers chasing deep sulphide targets. The branch registration puts a Norwegian drilling-technology company on the ground in the same market where Lundin Mining, Almina and the lithium developers award their drilling programmes.
Norwegian mining-services companies are rare in Portugal — the Nordic presence in the Portuguese mining sector is mostly Swedish (Boliden’s smelters buy Neves-Corvo concentrate; Epiroc and Sandvik supply equipment) and Finnish (Metso, Outokumpu’s historical stake). Devico is a different kind of entry: a niche technology leader with a registered local branch, which is the model that works for specialised Nordic suppliers whose customers are a handful of mine operators and exploration companies rather than the mass market. For Portuguese exploration and drilling contractors it is also a reference: the technology that Devico sells in Portugal is the one they compete with, or subcontract, on the same tenders.
Imdex’s acquisition of Devico, completed in 2023, folded the Trondheim company into a listed group that reports Devico’s directional-drilling revenue within its “Devico” segment; the Portuguese branch remained registered and filed accounts for 2024 (Portuguese registry data, September 2026). NorthSouth HQ found no public Portuguese contract award naming Devico; exploration drilling in Portugal is mostly awarded privately by mine operators and junior explorers rather than through public procurement.
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