Thoughts now turn to April conferences

After a hectic but very enjoyable week at Flotation '25 we are now relaxing in Constantia, a short distance from the Vineyard Hotel at Claremont.

Relaxing at the Silvermist Wine Estate

On Friday we had an excellent lunch at the Steenberg Wine Estate. Yesterday we were on the Atlantic coast at Camps Bay and caught up with some of the Imperial College London team.

Steenberg Wine Estate

Camps Bay

Now that Flotation '25 has ended (see reactions on LinkedIn at #Flotation25) our thoughts turn to our smaller conferences at the Vineyard in April, Physical Separation '26 and Mineral Processing Circuits '26. We will be drafting provisional programmes shortly, so it is not too late to submit abstracts.

Thursday at Flotation '25: student prizes and farewells

Flotation is becoming of great importance in the processing of ores of critical minerals and Charlotte Gibson, of Queen's University, Canada, opened the day with a keynote on lithium mineral flotation. 

Charlotte Gibson at the Maelgwyn Minerals Services booth

The morning sessions were all about the flotation of critical minerals, lithium, rare earths, titanium, vanadium and battery minerals recycling, followed by the final afternoon session on mineralogy, control, bubbles and froths.

Despite it being the final day, there was still a great buzz in the exhibition.

Dariusz Lelinski (right), of FLS, with Kevin Galvin and his two inventions,
the Reflux Flotation Cell and CoarseAIR

Although Molycop has attended other MEI Conferences, this is the first time that they have exhibited at one of the events.  Headquartered in Australia, Molycop provides flotation chemicals and instrumentation, testing and services for flotation circuits.

Making its debut at an MEI Conference, Neyrtec is a French company which offers flotation cells and conditioners.

With Christophe Hellegouarch and Alexis Ancia of Neyrtec

It was great to see three of our sponsors agreeing to sponsor future events: AECI and Promet101 for Flotation '27 and Metcelerate for Comminution '27.

With Natalie Shackleton of AECI

With Stuart Saich of Promet101

With Jan Cilliers and Jenny Wiese of Metcelerate

All too soon the conference ended and in his excellent summing up Jim Finch concluded that the future is in safe hands, considering the number of young people present. This led nicely into the awards of student prizes. Jim has been judging the best oral presentations and he and his wife Lois the best poster presentation. The prizes of copies of the 8th edition of Mineral Processing Technology, were awarded to Gillian Nikka Omaga, of Universite de Lorraine, France for best oral presentation and Ebuka Chukwuma, of McGill University, Canada, for best poster.

Ebuka and Gillian with Jim Finch and me

Also judging the presentations was Osvaldo Bascur, who offered copies of his book The Engineering Science of Mineral Processing. His prizes, for oral presentations, went to Jose Martinez, of Imperial College, UK and Guihua Zheng of China University of Mining & Technology and the University of Queensland.

Osvaldo with Jose and Guihua

In closing the conference Amanda Wills thanked the sponsors, exhibitors, presenters and delegates and invited everyone to attend Flotation '27 in two years time. And then out into the sunshine once more for the farewell drinks function and many more photo opportunities.

With MEI consultants Megan Becker and Aubrey Mainza

Barbara with MEI's longest serving conference delegate Antonio Peres

There are many more MEI photos in the Flotation '25 album. Please feel free to download any photo for your personal use. For commercial use please acknowledge the source- MEI Conferences.

Thanks to all of you for making Flotation '25 such an enjoyable and successful event.

Wednesday at Flotation '25

MEI's consultant Jim Finch, Emeritus Professor at McGill University, Canada, opened the day with a keynote lecture on frothers, which was followed by eight presentations on frothers and surfactants. 

Graeme Jameson and Jim Finch

After that, the major manufacturers of mechanical and pneumatic flotation cells, all conference sponsors,  took centre stage. Chinese company BGRIMM described their mechanical machine, currently the world's biggest mechanical machine and FLS compared developments on their large machines, the WEMCO and WEMCO II. FLS also manufactures two of Kevin Galvin's inventions, the Reflux Flotation Cell and the CoarseAIR, also highlighted today in presentations.

The BGRIMM machine on display in the exhibit booth

Kevin Galvin and Graeme Jameson are the inventors of five novel flotation cells from Australia's University of Newcastle (posting of 23rd June 2025). The NovaCell, licensed to Jord, is Graeme Jameson's latest invention, and was the subject of two presentations today.

The Concorde Flotation Cell is the second of Prof. Jameson's three flotation inventions, a paper on his established Jameson Cell being presented by Glencore Technology on Monday. The Concorde Cell is licensed to Metso, represented by a team of 17, and was the subject of two presentations. A further Metso presentation introduced their new Coarse Particle Flotation technology. This was presented by Nathalie Kupka. Only 6 years ago I had dinner with Nathalie and other PhD students at the Helmholtz Institute for Resource Technology, Germany (posting of 14th October 2019) and 2 months ago she became Business Manager for New Flotation Technologies at Metso, responsible for driving the success of the Concorde Cell and the novel Coarse Particle Flotation technology. 

Nathalie Kupka and Chantel Fourie with the Concorde Cell

Eriez manufacture three successful flotation technologies, Hydrofloat, the StackCell and the CavTube column, all highlighted in presentations today. Maelgwyn Mineral Services are long standing sponsors of MEI's flotation and comminution conferences and manufacture the  Imhoflot Cell, the subject of one of today's presentations.

A welcome break for lunch

During the afternoon coffee break I managed to catch up with three MEI Young Person's Award winners, Paulina Vallejos (2023), Ahmad Hassanzadeh (2020) and Paulina Quintanilla (2021).

Belma Sonmez Somer, of Akkim Kimya, called me over for a chat with her and her colleague Mahir Bulut.  Akkim Kimya is a well-established Turkish chemical manufacturer with a broad portfolio and global reach. 

With Belma and Mahir

And then the BASF team stopped me for a chat. BASF is a global chemical company headquartered in Germany, with a  portfolio of flotation reagents: collectors, frothers, modifiers, emphasising sustainable aspects.

I then caught up with a company new to MEI. Draslovka is a global chemical technologies company, primarily based in the Czech Republic, specialising in cyanide based chemicals and more recently in sustainable mining reagents and process technologies. In April 2023, Draslovka completed the acquisition of Blue Cube Systems. Blue Cube Systems was founded in 2001 in South Africa (Stellenbosch) to develop fast, in-line mineral analysers, and is well known to past MEI Conferences. It was good to talk to their two delegates Carika Haasbroek and Stefan Smit, both based in South Africa.

Another company new to MEI is South African company Enprotec, which is showcasing its flotation cell technology, which provides solutions to ultrafine flotation. They were very enthusiastic about the interactions and quality presentations at the meeting.

Enprotec with Gavin Mare, Annalie van Schoor and Arne Lourens

An extremely long and intensive day finished with sundowner drinks in the late evening sunshine.

The Maelgwyn Minerals team

#Flotation25

Tuesday at Flotation '25 and a surprise birthday celebration

Tuesday's programme was all about chemical reagents, beginning with a keynote lecture "Beyond reagent trials:  new directions in flotation chemistry research" from Liza Forbes representing Australia's JKMRC and the University of Newcastle.

Liza Forbes and Graeme Jameson

The satellite room proving popular again

The two biggest chemical company delegations are from South African reagents companies, sponsors AECI and MetSoP. AECI has become a regular supporter of MEI Conferences, including next year's Process Mineralogy '26 and Critical Minerals '26.

The AECI team

Thermo Fisher Scientific is a first time sponsor of an MEI flotation conference. Although their first time at a flotation conference they have been involved with a number of Process Mineralogy events. The company has launched its next generation Online Sampling and Elemental Analysis Station and the MSA-430 Multi-Stream Analyser, online systems designed for, it says, accurate, real-time elemental analysis of mineral slurry streams in processing plants. It was good to talk to their two representatives, Juan Urfanel (Spain) and Nur Muhamad (Australia).

The exhibition area was buzzing again, with lively discussion during the long breaks.

With delegates from DRC

Conference sponsor Capstone Copper is a copper-focused mining company headquartered in Vancouver, Canada and was formed in 2022 when Capstone Mining merged with Mantos Copper. Peter Amelunxen joined Capstone in April 2022 as Vice President, Technical Services and was promoted to Senior Vice President, Technical Services in August 2023. During the morning break Peter agreed to sponsor not only Flotation '27 but all forthcoming MEI Conferences!

Peter Amelunxen and MEI's Jon

Peter is one of five MEI Young Person's Awards winners at Flotation '25.  He was the first recipient of the award back in 2011 and in 2024 he received one of the SME's highest honours, the Antoine Gaudin Award. Zhiyong Gao, the 2018 winner,  is now Professor Vice Dean of the School of Minerals Processing and and Bioengineering, at Central South University, China. Although registered for the conference he had visa problems and unfortunately could not make it. Ahmad Hassanzadeh, who won the award in 2020 is now an independent consultant and works as the Chief Research Officer at Maelgwyn Mineral Services. UK. Paulina Vallejos, a researcher at Santa Maria University, Chile was the 2023 winner and Paulina Quintanilla won the award in 2021. She is now a Lecturer at University College London and recently was awarded the Centre for Process Analytics and Control Technology (CPACT) prize for recognition of her achievement in process analytics and control technologies. The prize recognises excellence in terms of scientific achievement, creative thinking and/or engagement between academia and industry. We have good reasons to be proud of these five people.

Delkor has operated under the TAKRAF Group banner since rebranding in October 2020, and has been represented at eight MEI Conferences in the past, sponsoring Precious Metals '10, and Flotation '13 as Tenova Delkor, an Italian company which also operates under the umbrella of the TAKRAF Group.

It was good to catch up with the representatives from sponsor Takraf-Delkor, the combined brand of the TAKRAF Group, a German industrial company specialising in heavy machinery and processing equipment for the mining and materials industries. 

Takraf's Klaus Schommarz (Namibia), George Jacob and Shiraz Hussain (South Africa)

During the lunch break I talked to the four delegates from Lihong Chem, a Chinese company at its first MEI Conference. They specialise in cellulose ethers and have a mining grade chemical for flotation applications as a gangue inhibitor or silicate suppressor.

Lunch break with Lihong Chem delegates

Enjoying lunch in the sun

The Vineyard Hotel is not a bad place to be marooned for a couple of days, but last night we relaxed at the Gold Restaurant in the city centre, where a surprise 80th birthday treat was provided for me!

The taxis have arrived

With Graeme Jameson and his grandson, Sam and my grandson, Will

All thoughts of flotation forgotten

Surprise, surprise!

#Flotation25