Expanding opportunities for export: Northern Ontario Export Program reports successes and renews for two more years.

• Author: Myers, Ella
• Position: MINING

Andrew Dasys and his team at Objectivity Inc. are self-proclaimed geeks, not marketing gurus.

When Sudbury-based Objectivity needed help selling its drill hole optimization tool to mining markets outside the region, they found that help in the Northern Ontario Export Program (NOEP, previously the Mining Supply and Service Export Assistance Program).

In 2010, Dasys was the vice-president of commercialization at the Mining Innovation Rehabilitation and Applied Research Corporation (MIRARCO), and working on 3D visualization of drill holes. Motivated by a question of whether there was a way to use the visualization tool to develop drill plans, Dasys started up Objectivity as MIRARCO's first commercial spinout and came up with DRX, short for drilling, reporting and targeting.

"DRX is an investment tool, it ties together the investment side and the geology side," said Dasys. "We make every metre drilled count."

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They had the product, but needed to develop a market.

"We're geeks, we're not marketing people, and so we had started doing some outreach into Chile and outside of Ontario, and John Baird was one of the consultants that the city had in the program. He came in and did some work with us and helped us realign our marketing," said Dasys.

Dasys completed the NOEP program in 2015, and has found success internationally since.

"In mining, your first client will be close to you, and the next one will be 5,000 miles away from you," said Dasys.

In Objectivity's case, the distance was more like 9,000 miles. The connections he made in the program led to an alliance with a drilling company in Australia, and he has interest from the U.S. and from Chile.

"We're going to continue developing the Australian market and we will continue on this...