EXECUTIVE director of specialist drilling company Coretrack, Warren Strange, has steadily increased his stake in the company over the past three months to become its largest shareholder.
Mr Strange has spent more than $700,000 buying Coretrack shares since being appointed a director in March.
He now holds 7.2 per cent of Coretrack’s almost 125 million shares.
The share purchases follow Coretrack’s acquisition of Mr Strange’s company Globe Drill early this year.
The Globe Drill deal was arguably the major development at Coretrack since the company floated on the ASX in 2006 with plans to commercialise its innovative drilling technology for the oil and gas sector.
Since listing, it has returned to investors several times to raise additional capital.
In July last year Coretrack announced plans to merge with listed drilling services company Imdex, but that deal was scrapped less than two weeks later.
Globe Drill was established by Mr Strange in 2005 as a specialist drill rig manufacturer, and developed cutting-edge drilling equipment for the renewable energy sector.
The Kalgoorlie outfit officially became part of the Coretrack group in the takeover.
As a result of the acquisition, Mr Strange was issued 5.76 million Coretrack shares at a deemed issue price of 22 cents.
This was valued around $1.27 million and equated to 4.6 per cent of Coretrack’s total shares.
On March 10, he became an executive director on the board of Coretrack.
Between April and June, Mr Strange has made several share purchases. He has bought as many as 1 million and as few as 64,000 shares at a share price ranging from as high as 26 cents to as low as 19 cents per share.
Mr Strange used a superannuation fund, Kantech International Super Fund, of which he is a beneficiary, to purchase the shares.
Mr Strange now has a beneficial interest in 9 million Coretrack shares.
He is hoping to introduce Australia’s first mobile energy drill rig capable of drilling beyond 1,500 metres to as deep as 3,500 metres.
