Critical Minerals '26 programme now available

We are pleased to announce an outstanding programme for Critical Minerals '26 in Cape Town. The full programme, including abstracts and details of the presenters can be found on the conference website, and a pdf of the timetable is also available.

Thirty-nine presentations are scheduled over the two days, including two high-profile keynotes from Prof. Jacques Eksteen and Prof. Chun-Xia Zhao, the response being such that we have closed abstract submission, any abstracts now being received being put on a waiting list.

As with all MEI Conferences, time will also be given for socialising and networking, including welcoming and closing receptions and an informal conference dinner at the nearby Wild Fig restaurant, which impressed us at the recent Mineral Processing Circuits '26.

Dinner pre-drinks at the Wild Fig restaurant at Mineral Processing Circuits '26

There will be a very small exhibition at the conference, and one booth is currently available.  

Thanks to our sponsors Promet101, Capstone Copper, Petrolab and AECI Mining Chemicals, our media partners International Mining and Minerals Engineering and our industry advocate CEEC: Coalition for Minerals Efficiency.

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June summary- dynamic Falmouth, birthday milestones and sad news from Germany

The month of May ended with a heatwave with unusually high temperatures down here in Cornwall, but the first two weeks of June were unusually cold and wet. The dismal weather continued to the middle of the month, when the annual UK Mining Conference in Cornwall was held in Falmouth. With a record attendance of 480 delegates it was good to catch up with familiar faces from as far away as Australia.

With Australian delegates Nigel Grigg and Ben Wraith, of Gekko Systems

And congratulations to Prof. Frances Wall, of Camborne School of Mines, who received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the conference dinner.  Frances was a keynote lecturer at MEI's Process Mineralogy '18 in Cape Town.

Frances Wall (left) in Cape Town, 2018

There's always something going on in Falmouth, Cornwall's jewel in the crown, and the weekend after the conference crowds flocked into the town for the annual Sea Shanty Festival. It takes over Falmouth every June, filling pubs, quaysides, beer gardens, streets and waterfront stages with traditional maritime songs, folk music and huge crowd singalongs. There were pirates everywhere!

Also in the middle of the month we announced a keynote lecture for next year's Hydrometallurgy '27. Dr. Kathy Sole will highlight the Nchanga Tailings Leach-Solvent Extraction-Electrowinning process, showing how this elegant process conforms to the principles for a circular hydrometallurgy circuit and can be considered to have been ahead of its time with respect to these ideas. Today, some 20% of world primary copper cathode is produced using this technology, with the dominant contribution coming from the African Copper Belt, so those who undertook the bold decision to develop this technology can hold their heads up high.

It is now over half a century since the development and construction of the massive plant on the Zambian Copperbelt, and only a few of the members of the team are still alive, but I was pleased to hear from the survivors shortly after my posting of 8th June. 

Ken Severs said that he was a minor contributor to the plant, his association with it being merely the months before he was, in October 1970, transferred to the newly-established Zambian Engineering Unit in Ashford, England. but in January 1971 he worked with Les Stewart in Arizona, using the Bagdad commercial plant as an experimental test facility for the tailings leach plant.

Les Stewart, who now lives in Alderney in the Channel Islands, emailed to say that being Tailings Leach Superintendent was an exciting start to his career, much of which he owes to Jack Holmes, who led the project.

Paul Smithson, who is now retired in Malta, emailed to wish all the best to the remaining Nchanga hands. Paul was involved with the high grade leach plant when I was transferred there briefly in 1973, prior to my departure from Zambia.  As was Willem Duyvestyn, who became a member of the tailings leach project. Willem is now semi-retired in Colorado, developing novel technologies for various critical metals including a novel chalcopyrite leaching technology.

The man who will forever be associated with the project and who made the final recommendation for the go-ahead, is Jack Holmes. He and his wife live in Somerset West, just 35 miles from Cape Town and despite being in his mid-90s he is planning to attend Hydrometallurgy '27 next year to hear Kathy's keynote. 

We celebrated two special birthdays this month. Very best wishes from all the family to Jon, who reached the milestone of his 50th birthday on the 17th. 

A week later, the legendary flotation scientist Prof. Graeme Jameson celebrated his 90th birthday. Congratulations, Graeme, from all of us at MEI, on this remarkable occasion. Your contributions to the minerals industry have left an enduring legacy, and it has been a privilege for so many of us to know and work with you over the years. 

We hope that Graeme will be able to join us at Flotation '27 in Cape Town next year, as, although he formally retired at the end of 2022, he and his small research team are working on two long-term projects. In the first, making use of a new way of improving the flotation kinetics and ultimate recovery of floatable particles and in the second aiming to reduce the size of flotation cells significantly, to reduce footprint and volume, hopefully by an order of magnitude.

I will always treasure the photograph taken at Flotation '25 of Graeme and me with our grandsons, Sam and Will. A wonderful memory of a very special occasion, where we celebrated my 80th birthday!

Graeme and me with grandsons Will and Sam

In the photo below, taken nine years ago at the SME Annual Meeting in Denver, Graeme is with Dr. Hanna Horsch, who was then with Hazen Research, Colorado.  Yesterday I was shocked and saddened to hear that Hanna died eight days ago in Germany.

Hanna was a lovely person and an exceptional mineralogist with over 25 years' experience in academia, industry and research organisations, mainly in the fields of applied and instrumental mineralogy.  She had many years experience with Anglo American Research Labs, then Intellection, FEI, Hazen Research, Inc. and SGS. She was a contributor to six MEI Conferences, in automated mineralogy, process mineralogy and flotation and we would catch up regularly at SME Annual Meetings. Our thoughts are with Hanna's family and ex-colleagues.

And finally,  just as the month of May ended with a heatwave, a record-breaking heatwave hit Europe and the UK at the end of this month, with parts of southern England facing temperatures in the high 30s C.  This month's heatwave was hotter in peak temperature, more humid, and more disruptive than that in May. Although May in Falmouth felt like a brilliant early summer spell, last week felt more like proper heatwave conditions, but the sea stopped it becoming as extreme as much of southern England.

The sea is the place to be at 31C: Falmouth's Swanpool beach

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Memories of Hydrocyclones '06, Falmouth

Hydrocyclones '06 was MEI's 2nd international symposium on hydrocyclones and was sponsored by Krebs Engineers.

Held over two days, 20 years ago this month, it immediately followed Ultrafine Grinding '06 at the Falmouth Beach Resort Hotel.

Fifteen papers were presented and selected papers were published in Volume 20 Issue 4 (2007) of Minerals Engineering.

Photos from the event are shown below:

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The Journey to Circuit Optimisation Starts with the Small Stuff

In comminution circuit design and optimisation, emphasis is often placed on the shiny, bright lights of innovation, equipment selection and flowsheet configuration. In a keynote lecture at Comminution '27, Dr. Richard (Ted) Bearman, of Bear Rock Solutions, Australia, will argue that small stuff is frequently dismissed but cumulatively can create significant losses in throughput, equipment availability and product quality. Beyond that there are also concomitant effects on power and circuit effectiveness, which may lessen the original benefits and dim the brighter future being pursued.

Ted will examine these "micro-losses" within crushing and grinding circuits, drawing on site-based experience and assessments across multiple operations. To illustrate the points, specific operational cases will be provided to show what can happen, why it occurred and steps to avoid such situations. By sweating the "Small Stuff", through timely identification of issues, focused attention and systematic operational analysis, the aim is to demonstrate that substantial improvements in comminution circuit performance can be achieved. 

Richard (Ted) Bearman, holds a B.Eng and PhD from the Camborne School of Mines, UK, and has been working in comminution and technology for 39 years.  He has worked for equipment suppliers, research organisations and mining companies and since 2009 has operated the Bear Rock Solutions consulting business.  Dr. Bearman has a focus on technology, comminution, systems optimisation, simulation and effectiveness of resource recovery, all within the context of cross-functional studies spanning geology, mining and processing. 

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June Cornish Mining Sundowner- new and familiar faces and a great historical video

Despite the Cornish 'mizzle' there was a good turnout last night at Falmouth's Chain Locker for the June mining sundowner.

For the first time we almost had a full MEI team present. Jon, in the Luxembourg office, was missing but it was good to see Amanda and her son, Will Collins, who recently joined the MEI team.

As well as a few current Camborne School of Mines students, it was good to see a number of "old boys", who always have interesting stories to tell.

With CSM alumni Connor Spollen, Andy Wetherelt, Alun Jones,
Mark Alcock, Mark Shimmield and Nick Wilshaw

I was particularly pleased to see Connor Spollen, who graduated in mineral processing in 1990 and has had extensive experience in Chile, Ireland, Canada and USA. He is now based in USA as CEO of Jervois, a leading global supplier of responsibly sourced and produced cobalt and nickel materials. 

With Connor and son

It is 35 years since I last saw Connor. His final year project at CSM was on mass balancing and he produced a paper, co-authored by me and maths lecturer Nigel Powell, which was presented at the SME Annual Meeting in Denver. After the conference we headed for Copper Mountain where he, Barbara and Nigel skied for the first time.

Denver, 1991. Connor right and Nigel left

Sundowner regulars Dave and Treve Milden of Gravity Mining were missing last night, but were at last week's UK Mining Conference in Cornwall. Dave was also at Physical Separation '26 (YouTube video) in Cape Town in April, promoting the world's largest gravity concentrator, the C910 MGS.

The Multi-Gravity Separator (MGS) was invented by the late, great Richard Mozley and is now manufactured by Gravity Mining, a sponsor of Physical Separation '26. The C910 is a far cry from the MGS which was launched in Stockholm in 1988 by Richard and his team.

C910, and prototype MGS in 1988

Richard Mozley 1993

Dave came across this great video last week which was made in 1993 two years before Richard's death. It details the development of the MGS on the Wheal Jane concentrator, near Truro, and features Richard Mozley and two familiar faces at the mining sundowners, Kevin Ross, who was Managing Director of Carnon Consolidated, who owned the mine, and Mike Hallewell, who was then Metallurgical Superintendent. The MGS helped the concentrator at Wheal Jane to continue operating after mining stopped in 1991, as it processed ore brought in from the South Crofty tin mine. It finally closed in 1998, when South Crofty shut down. 

Mike and Kevin, 1993

Mike Hallewell continues his involvement with South Crofty. He is consulting metallurgist to Cornish Metals Inc., the mining developer whose success largely depends on successfully reopening the historic tin mine and benefiting from long-term demand for critical minerals. Mike will be a co-author of a paper at Critical Minerals '26 in Cape Town in November. Presented by James Strongman of Redruth company Petrolab, the paper will assess the economic impact of ore sorting, which will be used to pre-concentrate the ore at South Crofty.  Petrolab is a sponsor of the conference, and for Process Mineralogy '26 which precedes it, and James will be presenting papers at both events.

Amanda and Will with James Strongman

It was an excellent sundowner last night and I look forward to more surprises at the next one, which will be on Thursday July 16th at the Chain Locker, from 5.30pm.

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Memories of Ultrafine Grinding '06, Falmouth

Ultrafine Grinding '06 was held in Cornwall at the ill-fated Falmouth Beach Resort Hotel, which six years later was destroyed by fire.

The two-day conference was MEI's first ultrafine grinding conference, and was also the last as it was merged into the comminution series two years later.

Attended by 64 delegates from 24 countries, sponsorship was provided by Xstrata Technology, PMT-Jetmill, Saint-Gobain Zirpro, Industrial Minerals and notably Maelgwyn Mineral Services (MMS), sponsoring their first MEI Conference. Since then MMS has regularly supported MEI Conferences, particularly the comminution and flotation series, but others as well. 

Twenty-two papers were presented over the two days and selected papers were published in Volume 20 Issue 4 (2007) of Minerals Engineering.

Photos taken at the event, including a first evening coastal path walk and a final afternoon visit to the Camborne-Redruth historical mining district, are shown below.

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