"Aluminium trays introduced in the late 1960's were found to rot when suphide bearing ores broke down in them.  Cardboard trays were light but had to be stored inside at great expense to ensure their long life. Wood trays with galvanised metal bases proved to be the most durable, however core had to be re-boxed at regular intervals if suphide ores or termites were present. An early attempt at using inferior platic trays in North Queesland, Paul was very familiar with, these trays disintegrated in the sun, a bio-degradable core tray was not what the industry wanted.

Paul was heavily involved in the drill core handling systems for WMC at Ernest Henry in North Queensland and the Phillipines and I believe  it was after handling many thousand of metres of core in trays that Paul decided to invest his own money into inventing the tray for the 21st century.

He sent me two of his original plastic trays with the instruction to leave them outside and see if they fell apart or if someone could break them.  They are still in the backyard having served as plant boxes, dog barriers and the base of skate board ramps. They have not degraded.

Companies I have worked with have used the trays around the world.  We shipped some into Kazakhstan to handle core in freezing to very hot conditions in remote locations where we did not want to build sheds to store the wooden hand made ones used in that part ot the world.

The trays are universally liked by the people who handle them, as they allow the core to sit below the lip of the trays and the trays to be stacked and bundled efficiently for transportation. Drain holes, rough marking areas for writing on them and hand slots to allow ease of lifting were all unique innovations at the time.

Old core from programs going back 30 years have had to be re-boxed at Cloncurry as the older trays have rotted out and the metals corroded away due to the attack of the suphides ores. These trays were stored in sheds.

Based on the back yard test we do not expect to have to re-box the core in the 'explorer' trays which are now stored outside.

Paul put a lot of time, effort, experience and money into developing the Explorer core tray system using 30-40 years of knowledge of the indadequacies of the previous core tray systems.  His technical design drafting skills no doubt contributed greatly to the success of the core tray.

At the time of its development the Explorer tray was unique in its innovations and usefulness."

Barry J Goss, Ivanhoe Australia Limited