The name Holman is well known to everyone in the mining industry, Holman Brothers Ltd. being a mining equipment manufacturer founded in 1801 and based in Camborne, Cornwall. The shaking table was one of its many products and together with Wilfley Tables, provided the backbone to gravity concentration circuits worldwide.
Now Holman-Wilfley Ltd is one of the world's most established and recognised suppliers of shaking tables and has been manufacturing gravity concentration equipment for the past 16 years. Originally set up on the Wheal Jane mine site in Cornwall in 1998 it relocated to larger premises in 2011 at Pool in Redruth next to South Crofty Mine. The company inherited the licensed OEM Holman and Wilfley technology from the original manufacturers, making them the only global company that still produces the well established, genuine premium brand gravity tables.
Both the Holman and Wilfley shaking tables have been in use for the best part of a century and Holman-Wilfley Ltd have been continuously developing the design, construction methods and materials to improve the product lines, and MEI is pleased to welcome the company as a sponsor of next year's Physical Separation '17 in Falmouth.
Earlier this week I dropped by their premises to talk to Managing Director Chris Bailey, who was one of my old CSM students, graduating in 1978, and to find out what the company has been up to lately.
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| With Engineering Technician Ben Thomas, Quality Assurance Manager Steve Thorne, Managing Director Chris Bailey and Production Manager Adam Bailey |
One of their largest recent supply contracts has been to Tronox Limited, Namakwa, South Africa, a total of 42 operating Holman units, as the final stage concentration of zircon recovered from a new tailings recovery project. This operation was successfully commissioned in early 2016.
Mineral Sands (zircon/rutile) continues as an active market, where Holman Tables are well proven, with further recent supply to Vietnam (Amigo Minerals), and to Industrial Minerals Corp., India.
In the environmental/recycling sector Wilfley and Holman machines are widely used, and machines have been recently despatched to UK and European destinations for recovery of non-ferrous metals from electronic and automotive recycling residues. Earlier this this year a new multiple installation of Holman units was commissioned as part of a contaminated soil washing plant in Switzerland.
With tin showing relative stability in demand and price, they are currently engaged in a large supply of Holman machines to a new tin project in Spain, and have been awarded a supply contract for machines to the Corporation Minera de Bolivia (COMIBOL), Colquiri Mine.
It's great to see succesful mining suppliers actively involved in Cornwall, and we thank Holman-Wilfley for their support of next year's conference.
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| Current Physical Separation '17 sponsors |
It's great to see the persistence of tables and other gravity separation processes. The 'not so new approach', focusing on 'cheaper' coarse separations prior to finer comminution and 'expensive' separation processes such as flotation, is a return to past thinking. It will be useful to see research probing the capability of such processing systems. Bob
ReplyDeleteI would like to underline the point that from the environmental point of view, gravity separation process is environmentally friendly in terms of the need of the chemicals.
ReplyDeleteYes, we got a bit carried away with other processes and forgot conventional techniques like gravity.
ReplyDeleteI made the same remark to Richard Mozzley when he visited Indian School of Mines, another great legend, who came out with unique machines in those days. I do not think that there is any mineral processing lab anywhere where you would not find Richard's machine. Profession owes him a great deal.