Gloucestershire drilling contractor ADP Group has acquired Geotron UK, a specialist ground investigation business based in Mossley, Greater Manchester. The purchase brings together two providers of drilling and excavation services used by engineering, construction, and environmental consultants across Britain. The transaction value has not been disclosed.
Geotron was established in 2002 through a collaboration involving a UK team with an environmental consultancy background and the Dutch contractor Geotron International. It began with one site crew and now describes an operation of almost 30 employees, including ten field-based drilling and groundworks teams alongside management and support staff.
Its technical work includes borehole drilling, soil sampling, groundwater monitoring, in-situ geotechnical testing, and equipment installed to support contaminated land remediation. These services provide information about the ground conditions on which building foundations, roads, and other infrastructure will depend.
Geotron’s equipment includes rotary and percussive drilling rigs, cable percussion machines, and tracked window sampling equipment. The company lists 16 drilling rigs in its fleet and uses its own trucks, vans, and trailers to move equipment and crews around the country. Having different equipment types allows investigations to be adapted to the depth, geology, and access conditions of individual sites.
ADP operates from Wickwar in Gloucestershire and provides rotary borehole drilling, ground investigation, land and utility surveying, and vacuum excavation. Its specialist services can be used before intrusive construction to establish the location of buried utilities and to investigate soil and groundwater conditions.
The acquisition adds Geotron’s northern base, personnel, and plant to ADP’s existing capabilities. Tom Page, group managing director of ADP, described a longstanding overlap between the companies’ customers and said their teams had experience working in the same specialist markets.
Site investigation commonly involves a sequence of activities rather than a single drilling task. Underground services may first need to be located and inspection pits prepared. Engineers can then obtain samples and measurements through boreholes or other techniques before completing monitoring installations or remediation work. The businesses’ combined service offering covers several parts of that sequence.
Geotron also provides services used in environmental remediation, including the installation of monitoring and treatment wells and direct injection of remediation products. These are distinct from conventional foundation investigations but rely on related drilling skills and equipment.
The enlarged group will have a wider operating footprint and additional capacity to mobilise crews for projects in different UK regions. Geotron’s own company records show it has operated from Mossley for more than two decades, while ADP traces its drilling and engineering operations back to an earlier business established in the 1980s.
For the companies’ customers, the acquisition combines two established subcontracting operations with expertise in technical site work. ADP will add Geotron’s specialist equipment and staff to the services it already provides across the geotechnical and environmental markets.
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