My year with MEI, in pictures

2013 has been another enjoyable year, catching up with old friends, meeting new contacts, and with a number of reunions with friends from the distant past.

In January, Barbara and I took the ferry across the River Fal to St. Mawes, to meet up with our old friends Terry and Pauline Veasey. Prior to his retirement, Terry was a popular lecturer at the University of Birmingham and one of the earliest members of the Minerals Engineering Editorial Board. Also in January Minerals Engineering celebrated its silver jubilee issue.

Another great reunion in February was with Bob and Jean Schofield. Bob had been my closest friend during our days at Leeds University, but we had completely lost touch after leaving Leeds, until Bob traced me via Google!  We met up for dinner at Heathrow Airport, and spent a few hours catching up on how are lives had treated us in the intervening 43 years.

Barbara and I were at Heathrow for the flight to Denver, taking us to the SME Annual Meeting, preceded with 9 days skiing in the Rockies at Breckenridge. It was unusually cold and windy in the mountains and Barbara's skiing was curtailed with a bad fall on the fourth day.

Arriving in Denver

Road conditions leaving Breckenridge were atrocious and we eventually arrived in Denver in the middle of a raging snowstorm.

Due to the weather and disruption of flights into Denver, the SME meeting got off to a relatively slow start, but on the next day the skies had cleared and people flocked into the convention centre to register for what turned out to be a record attendance of over 6800 delegates. Always a great meeting place, it was good to catch up with our old friends John and Donna Starkey, sponsors of Comminution '14, as well as many other MEI sponsors who had booths at the giant exhibition.

Barbara with Donna and John Starkey

The FLSmidth booth is always a landmark, and it was there that I met Randy Zahn, to congratulate him on becoming the second recipient of the MEI Young Person's Award, which I presented to him 4 months later at Physical Separation '13 in Falmouth.
 

The highlight of our year was in March, with the birth of our 3rd grandchild, Josephine, to Jon and his partner Kathryn Hadler, who is with the strong flotation research team at Imperial College.

Another reunion in May, this time with an old friend from our youth club days, who we had not seen for over 50 years! Like me Roy Jeffrey was a metallurgist who left for Zambia after graduation. He also worked at Nchanga, on the high grade leach plant, and then the tailings leach plant, leaving Zambia in 1990. It was good to have lunch with Roy and his wife Pam in Falmouth.

Over 100 delegates from 17 countries were in Falmouth in June for Computational Modelling '13 and Physical Separation '13. MEI's small Falmouth conferences are always something special, the coastal path walks to the 17th century Chain Locker pub being particularly enjoyable!

Computational Modelling delegates at 16th century Pendennis Castle

Welcome drinks at the Chain Locker in old Falmouth

Despite the heavy rain during the Physical Separation walk, we managed to eventually dry out in the pub, and enjoy a convivial evening with the Cornish Mining Sundowner regulars, who meet here every month.

A very wet coast path walk

Drying out at the Chain Locker

A highlight of the Physical Separation conference was a visit to the King Edward Mine Museum near Camborne, and then on to the nearby village of Carnkie to explore the ruins of the Basset Mines, the 'birthplace of modern mining'.

 

At King Edward Mine

At the Basset Mines, Carnkie

 

In July we moved to our new house (and MEI Office) at 1 Freeman Collins Drive,  with a sweeping panoramic view down the Falmouth Valley to Falmouth Bay. 

 

Also in July I attended The AusIMM's Metplant '13 in Perth, surely one of the world's most expensive cities! Here I caught up with another of my old Zambia colleagues, Paul Piercy, who I had not seen for 42 years, and briefly with Precious Metals '15 consultant Mike Adams, recently appointed as an editor of Hydrometallurgy, who called in with his son Jonathan who is a mineral processor in his final year at Murdoch University.

Paul Piercy with Karen Keet of Blue cube Systems

With Jonathan and Mike Adams

In early September Barbara and I were in Mpumalanga, South Africa for the SAIMM's Base Metals '13 conference. Held at White River, this was a fairly low-key event, due to the depressed state of the industry in South Africa, and was attended by around 130 delegates. Mpumalanga is one of the most beautiful areas of South Africa, and after the conference we spent some time exploring the historic gold mining towns of Pilgrim's Rest and Barberton.

Pilgrim's Rest

Barberton

Returning to Heathrow, Barbara took the train back to Falmouth, while I flew out to Germany for the European Comminution Symposium in Braunschweig, a historic town which provided some interesting and enjoyable dinner venues.

Another great reunion in Falmouth in October, with Bob and Jean Schofield, who we had met up with at Heathrow in February, and Graham and Sheila Neate. We had all been together at Leeds University, and coincidentally we met up exactly 50 years after first meeting at Leeds in October 1963.

Reunion at the Basset Mines near Camborne

A week later I was in Chile for Procemin '13 in the lovely city of Santiago, venue for next year's IMPC. It was a great few days, the highlight for me being the visit to the El Teniente tailings treatment plant at Minera Valle Central, a truly fascinating operation.

While in Santiago, I enjoyed another reunion, this time with Roger Kelly, who I worked with at Nchanga, and who I had not seen since the early 70s. Another pleasant  evening was spent at a reception hosted in downtown Santiago by Australia's JKTech.

With Roger Kelley

At the JKTech reception

All the MEI team were in Cape Town in November for Flotation '13 at the Vineyard Hotel.

Dinner at the Vineyard with Elsevier's Dean Eastbury

This was our second biggest conference ever, and of the 257 delegates representing 28 countries, those pictured below had attended all 6 conferences in the series, since the first one in Adelaide in 2000. Left to right are me, Jim Finch, Barbara, Antonio Peres, Dee Bradshaw, Stephen Neethling, Dan Alexander, and Amanda.

It was particularly good to see Xuming Wang looking so well at the conference. He and his University of Utah colleague Jan Miller were seriously hurt in a car crash in Tibet in July, from which Jan is still slowly recovering.

With Xuming Wang

Xuming even took part in the first part of the hike up Table Mountain the day after the conference closure. Amanda and I led around 20 delegates to the summit via Platteklip Gorge, the oldest route up the mountain.

At the top of Platteklip Gorge

Amanda and Siva Jam on top of Table Mountain

It was then nice to relax for a few days at Camp's Bay before our return to the UK.
 

Barbara and Amanda at Camp's Bay

Two hours after returning home I was at nearby Camborne School of Mines, to hear Imperial College's Jan Cilliers present a fascinating lecture exploring the physics of flotation. Jan had also been at Flotation '13, and will be a keynote speaker at Flotation '15.

CSM with Kathryn Hadler, Nick Wilshaw, Frances Wall, Jan Cilliers, Steve Barber and Pat Foster

And then Christmas was rapidly approaching, with the two final events of 2013, the CSM Christmas lunch and the final Cornish Mining Sundowner.

The CSM Christmas Lunch

It has been another fascinating year, and all of us at MEI now look forward to 2014 and wish you all the very best for 2014.  Hope to catch up with you somewhere around the globe!