AusIMM Mill Operators 2014 Day 1

Day 1 of the AusIMM's Mill Operators Conference in Townsville is now over, and Jon has sent this brief update of the day's events:

The 12th Mill Operators conference was opened this morning by Conference Chairman David Hunter of the AusIMM who welcomed approximately 375 delegates representing 19 countries to Townsville. There will be 50 speakers throughout the 3 days and there are also 38 exhibitors.

Tim Napier-Munn with fellow CEEC Directors Joe Pease
and Elizabeth Lewis-Gray

Geoff Sharrock, the President of the AusIMM then spoke about the organisation, which began 121 years ago and is still growing to this day. The theme of the latest conference in this series, which began in 1978, is “Achieving More with Less” and the opening keynote was given by Prof. Tim Napier-Munn, Director of CEEC, and was titled “Cunning Solutions to Process Improvement”. Tim joked in opening that it was good to see a conference with so few academics and that he was lucky to be allowed in, the balance though being a difficult one to get right, as we know from experience with MEI Conferences.

The coffee and lunch breaks are held in the pavilion housing the exhibition and here I was able to catch up with some previous MEI Conference exhibitors including Peter Wulff from Eirich who was with his Australian agents Ian and Claire Laws from Joest.

Peter Wulff (right) with Ian and Claire Laws

Shengyu Mao from Chemco was next to Eirich and I hope to see both companies at Comminution ’16.

One of the sponsors of Flotation ’15 is SNF Flomin and Kevin Botha is here with his team. Kevin will also be exhibiting at next years Flotation conference in Cape Town.



Kevin Botha with Michael Stoychevski and David Ho Wing

Vega Industries regularly attend MEI's Comminution conferences, and pictured here are Christian Delcour, Craig Norbury and Jeffrey Titus.

Lunch was a chance to relax and I think the spot with the best view was found by these four delegates:

After the final session, drinks and canapes were served in the exhibition area and I caught up with Sam Ayoub from Continental Engineering, a regular exhibitor at our Flotation series who has his booth booked for 2015 in Cape Town.

In the gardens I chatted with Tim Napier-Munn, Elizabeth Lewis-Gray and John Russell, a sponsor and exhibitor at Comminution ’14 who I hope to see again in 2016.