The supply company is a service-driven organisation that has very strong local representation and distribution, with half of its business coming from throughout Africa and Asia. This is a company that does “get off its backsides and go and visit customers whether they’re in the deepest darkest parts of Russia or the deepest darkest parts of Africa or the deepest darkest parts of Queensland,” says Mr Greathead.

The company represents some major international brands, and has exclusive representation for M-I SWACO drilling fluids throughout Australasia. M-I SWACO turned over $US3.6 billion last calendar year and has just close to 13,000 employees, with an annual spend on research development of over $US80 million per annum.

As Mr Greathead says: “It is clear that ADG represents some weighty brands!

“M-I SWACO is the world’s largest drilling fluids supplier, full stop. What we have now is the opportunity to offer the trenchless customers a greater opportunity. Not only can they come to us for a range of drilling fluids, they can also come to us for a range of drills. We can offer the products from the world’s largest drilling fluids products supplier, but we can also offer you drill rigs as well that you can drill your holes that you need the drilling fluids with.

“People don’t use us just for one product in one segment, we can vertically integrate and offer a wider product offering to the same range of customers which makes them have to go to less people.”

ADG’s modus operandi is to make life easy for its end users, so if a company has got particular product services or shapes that it cannot supply for one reason or another or its traditional suppliers let them down, that’s where ADG steps in.

“This ranges from drilling equipment and consumables such as the drill bits and drill pipe and everything that you would normally associate in and around the drill rig to a range of workshop consumables, parts for engines, pumps, that kind of equipment,” says Mr Greathead. The company also supplies a wide range of safety equipment, or basically anything anybody needs to keep a drilling operation going, or indeed getting a drilling operation started.

In the end it comes down to what people may need in a remote location, whether that remote location is a thousand kilometres away or 10,000 kilometres away. Mr Greathead says that ADG has even had requests for pool tables – “You know if people are setting up a wet mess or a recreation facility in central Queensland or in central Africa, they need things to keep the troops entertained.”

With over a thousand suppliers on its database from all types of industry, ADG supplies everything from practical equipment to keep operations going, to coffee and vegemite.

Supplying all over the world, Mr Greathead says that ADG has to understand “customs and customs” – that is, “customs as in local customs, what works in a local region, but then customs as in import/export people.”

Mr Greathead says “We’ve got some blue-chip opportunities plus the opportunity to enhance the number of distribution points we physically have ourselves. There’s a great demand for the levels of service we can offer, using those possibly also eliminates companies’ need to have their own purchasing departments, which is a strong demand for what we do and geographically in the regions where we do it and also in the mining oil and gas space there’s plenty of opportunity there, so a tremendous excitement, tremendous growth opportunities, we just have to pick the right ones because we can’t pick them all.

“If you’re in a remote location whether it be central WA or central Africa, if you need a part, ADG needs to be able to know how to get that part to you as quickly as possible, at a competitive price and acceptable quality. Otherwise your operation or your piece of equipment might come to a standstill and also it might come to a standstill because a part for $500 has failed, or you’ve run out of it, and your equipment might be worth $5 million, so we understand the urgency that we’ve got to drop everything and make sure that we understand the customs and the customs, to make sure that part can get through.”