Junior miners are moving to hire equipment rather than buy it outright as they battle to keep capital costs down to help attract financing in a difficult debt market.

“In a situation where there is substantial development, as is taking place now, the rental business gets ­extremely busy because it is a case of allocating capital and miners don’t want to tie capital up in equipment supply," said the managing director of ­Onsite Rental, Trevor James. “The requirement that these organisations have will be to channel the ­invest­ment towards the project and not ­towards the equipment supply."