Starting up a business in Ba was a conveni­ent choice for the late Shiu Nadan who set up Western Drilling Co. Pte. Ltd in 1994.

The office was once a small office set up near the resi­dence of the late founder.

28 years later, business has grown with 14 employees working as full-time staff.

Director Kamal Nadan said the company had start­ed off as a small business with only one drilling rig.

He said company was op­erating mainly in the West­ern Division for a few years and slowly diversified to whole of Viti Levu.

But as business grew, de­mand for service and office space also grew.

“We currently have three drilling rigs, a company yard located in Lot 61, Wailailai, Ba and four ex­perienced drillers, welders and mechanics.

“We started off with only domestic drilling but now we also do commercial drilling, agricultural drill­ing, outer island drilling works, test drilling, sam­pling, earth pits, anchor­ing holes, drawdown test­ing and complete borehole plumbing solutions.”

Western Drilling Co. Pte. Ltd is also planning to mobilize its service to Vanua Levu in the coming few weeks.

At the time the company was setup, service was in a small scale which only included borehole drilling with supply and installa­tion of submersible pumps.

Western Drilling Co. Pte. Ltd continues to provide the same services along with many other services.

“Our service was in a lot of demand because the gov­ernment water supply was not spread to many areas which opted farmers and residences to consider bore­holes as their main source of water supply.”

Founder of Western Drilling Co. Pte. Ltd, the late Shiu Nadan.

Mr Nadan said one the challenges faced back then lack of technology as infor­mation was not as readily available back then com­pared to how it is today.

“Another problem faced was communication be­tween our office and site workers as we did not have mobile phone services.

“These problems were solved as the technology grew and provided us with the ease to operate our busi­ness.”

Western Drilling Co. Pte. Ltd is located in 2 Koula Road, Varadoli, Ba.

Drilling works carried out by Western Drilling Co. Pte. Ltd.

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