Day 3 at MillOps '16

Jon's report from Perth on the final day of the Mill Operators Conference:

There was a good turnout this morning for the keynote presentation. The last day wind down of a conference was highlighted by the conference chairman who urged people to stay until the end, always a difficult problem for organisers!

Final numbers were announced as 460, up from 380 at the last event and in the closing talks Peter Munro said the aim for 2018 should be 600. Of the 460, 99 were operators and so the challenges of getting people from plants to the conference were highlighted. This is a real challenge faced and options such as getting papers written by others using the plant data were discussed.

The exhibition ran until the afternoon which gave me a chance to look around again and get some more photos, it was especially interesting to talk to IXOM who were previously Orica and had attended MEI Conferences in the past, we hope to see them at Flotation '17!

During the close Tim Napier-Munn presented an award for the best paper to Sinclair/Hunter/Landweh for their paper entitled "Syama Gold Mine- the journey towards a class-leading Gold Mine". The best presentation award went to Campbell Haines for his paper "The transition from semi-autogenous to autogenous milling at Waaihi Gold".

Overall the conference has been viewed to be a great success, partly for two changes since last time. First the abandoning of parallel sessions (something MEI have always been fervently opposed to) and then the discussions after the talks.

I look forward to Mill Ops 2018 and MEI will post information regarding its date and location once these have been decided.