IMARC tech stars 2025: Part 4
- 20 July 2025
Charl Retief, mining value stream leader at acQuire Technology Solutions, believes the timing of the company’s GIM Essentials market launch couldn’t be better.
A 20-year veteran of the geoinformatics and geological data management technology space, Retief has seen massive growth in mining data generation over that time prompt innovations that have driven significant value gains. But there have also been stalemates. “Many of the challenges that existed when I first joined the industry are still around,” he told a recent company podcast. “I think many organisations are still data-rich but information-poor.”
Retief rejoined Vela Software with Western Australia-based acQuire after it was bought by the Constellation Software group unit in 2018. He had earlier worked with Vela’s Datamine.
acQuire has been growing its top-and-mid-tier mining client base as a geoscientific information management (GIM) software company for nearly three decades and also broadened the use of its flagship GIM Suite outside of mining. At the same time drilling and geological data management for the huge number of smaller companies that make up the junior segment of the mineral exploration space hasn’t been getting easier.
“Many geology teams are relying on limited or unreliable tools to make critical decisions in the field and for their drill program,” Retief says. “With smaller teams and fewer resources they often don’t have access to the enterprise-level data management platforms available to larger operations.
“At a time when accurate data can make or break a project GIM Essentials is designed to give emerging miners the confidence and capability to grow, compete and make confident business decisions.
“GIM Essentials has actually been in the making for a long time,” Retief said on the podcast. “About three years ago we set out to be a lot more deliberate about building a solution for this segment of the market.
“GIM Suite will remain our flagship solution focused on the larger mining enterprises with multiple sites, hundreds of users [and] very complex operating environments. GIM Essentials stands alongside GIM Suite … from a geological data management perspective.
“We set out to build a solution that comprehensively covers the foundational elements of good data management aimed at [largely] at those companies looking to do resource and reserve development with big drilling programs.
“Some of the solutions that play in that space of the market, the mid-market so to speak, don’t necessarily cover all the requirements from a geological data management perspective. When you look at it from planned drill holes through to core logging as an importation, even dispatching and QAQC; so the whole process, other solutions on the market do some of these things quite well. Some of them are a bit patchy.
“GIM Suite and GIM Essentials play a very specific and pivotal part in the bigger information landscape of a mining organisation. For us it’s important that our products facilitate that free flow of validated data into and out of our solutions, and we will continue to go down that path of building out integration and connectivity capabilities … with our own solutions and with key technology partners in the industry.”
Retief said GIM Essentials was designed as a hosted cloud-based solution managed by acQuire for fast deployment. Users didn’t need to be trained database managers.
“A customer can start capturing their data within a matter of days, which is a big problem solver because typically teams are smaller and they have many other balls they need to juggle other than just managing geological data.
“All they need to tell us is what standards, validations and codes they want. We configure it and they can start capturing it.
“There’s a native fully integrated mobile application so your core loggers out in the field at the rig or in the core shed can capture core on the mobile app [which] fully adheres to all the validation and standards that have been configured.
“So at the point of data capture everything is already consistent from a data perspective and a data standards and governance point of view and it seamlessly then pushes back into the central data store of GIM Essentials. That’s then available to all the other users that can interact [with] the web interface.”
Retief says the industry as a whole is under real pressure to find new mines faster.
“There are some macro themes that are really pushing increased demand for … vital minerals,” he says.
“That’s really where GIM Essential shines, is getting up quickly and helping companies make reliable decisions to draw a potential resource quickly.
“So for us it’s a really timely moment to release GIM Essentials.”
acQuire Technology Solutions is a silver sponsor at IMARC 2025 at the ICC Sydney from October 21-23.
