New positions for Intellection's Alan Butcher, Paul Gottlieb and Hanna Horsch

It is less than 3 years since Alan Butcher, Chief Scientific Officer of Intellection, and I shook hands on an agreement to organise annual conferences on Automated Mineralogy in Brisbane.

However, shortly after Automated Mineralogy '08, the 3rd conference in the series, Intellection went into receivership, and selected assets were acquired by FEI Company.

Alan Butcher has sent me this update by email:

It has been an interesting couple of months. As you can see, I am now working full-time for FEI, still based in Brisbane; in fact, back at my old (former Intellection) desk, in the same building!

Quite an exciting and unique opportunity now exists following much disruption, stress, uncertainty and anguish. By acquiring selected assets of Intellection in December 2008, FEI are now naturally the market leaders in Automated Mineralogy. We are currently working through how to continue with the QEMSCAN brand, the software and philosophy, and at the same time, make the most of FEI's existing and well established (and once competitive) technology and resources, which of course includes the MLA product.

Paul Gottlieb and I have been re-hired to make this transition happen, along with Hanna Horsch, and few other ex-Intellection employees. We are officially known as FEI Australia and are less than 10 people. Sadly, many former colleagues were not made offers.

I remain very committed (if not more so now!) to growing the world of Automated Mineralogy, both from a business and scientific/engineering perspective. I hope to be able to participate in as many conferences and trade shows as is possible, given the current climate. Obviously, the mining world is in a state of dramatic flux right now but we are blessed that many opportunities for automated mineralogy actually lie outside this sector, in oil and gas for example, where demand for QEMSCAN is as high as ever.

I