Thursday at Flotation '23

Thursday November 9th

The final day of the conference began with a keynote presentation from Diana Drinkwater, of Metcelerate Australia. 

Metcelerate, sponsoring an MEI Conference for the first time, provides training solutions to build technical competence in the mineral processing workplace for metallurgists and engineers and recently won the annual IChemE 2022 Global Award for Business Start-Up companies. Metcelerate is represented by Katja Freitag, the General Manager from Canada and Jenny Weise, Program Manager from Cape Town and CEO Diana Drinkwater. In the photo below Jenny, Diana and Katja were talking to Damien Krebs of Primero, Australia and Stuart Saich of Promet101 Consulting, Chile.  Promet101 is a sponsor of the conference and have agreed to sponsor Flotation '25, Process Mineralogy '24 and Critical Minerals '24.  Metcelerate has also signed up to sponsor Flotation '25.

Considering that this is the final day of a 4-day conference there was still much activity in the exhibition and poster areas.

Nouryon, formerly known as AkzoNobel Specialty Chemicals, is an independent global specialty chemicals leader and Juhani Wallenius was talking to Sian Parkes, University of Newcastle, Australia, and Hifsa Pervez and Benedikt Tiedeman, of Technische Universitat Dresden, Germany.  

Regular sponsor Clariant has a strong team of seven, five from Brazil and one each from South Africa and Germany. Clariant is one of the world’s leading specialty chemical companies, providing a wide range of flotation collectors for specific duties such as the flotation of industrial minerals, iron ore, and molybdenite. Due to difficulties with storage, handling and disposal of xanthate collectors, sulfide mining companies are facing increasingly difficult xanthate logistics challenges. Through collaboration with customers, Clariant has developed alternatives with high copper flotation performance and safer handling and disposal solution for mines, lowering capital expenditure and providing a longer shelf life than solid xanthate. The Clariant xanthate replacement collectors allow operators to discontinue the use of sodium isopropyl xanthate and potassium amyl xanthate.

Passing the Akkim Kimya booth I saw Belma Sonmez and Burak Cinar Arzuoglu talking to Li Ling, of BGRIMM, China.

Akkim Kimya, the leading chemicals producer of Turkey, was established in Yalova in 1977. Conducting manufacturing operations at 5 different locations with over 1000 employees, Akkim has a special place in the chemicals industry with its diversity of products. Akkim is a chemicals company that has been serving over 70 countries in six continents with its wide range of products, including chlor-alkali and derivatives, peroxides, methylamines, persulfates, bisulphites, textile auxiliaries, paper, water treatment chemicals, construction chemicals and plastic additives. Akkim Kimya acquired USK Kimya, one of the largest carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) producers in Turkey and the world in 2021. 

Prior to the lunch break Amanda and I caught up with the six delegates from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

It was also good to see the delegates from the University of Queensland, who have presented a number of papers this week.

With the UQ Chemical Engineers.......

....and UQ's JKMRC delegates

Also great to see a large contingent from Vale, Brazil.

Things are looking really good for Flotation '25 with four more current sponsors signing up this afternoon, Gold Ore, Nesch Mintech Tanzania, Solvay and Metsop.

Amanda with Adrian Singh of Gold Ore

Jon with Prosper Munemo and Happiness Nesvinga of Nesch Mintech

With Tarun Bhambhani and Rex Mumbi of Solvay 

Jon shakes on agreement with Metsop's Marcus Manyumwa

All too soon the conference came to an end with 22 presentations today. MEI's consultant Jim Finch summarised the event, noting the increasing number of young people, particularly young women, now involved in flotation. Appropriately he presented a signed copy of the 8th edition of Mineral Processing Technology, edited by me and Jim, to Aliza Marie Salces, of Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden, Germany, for the best student poster at the conference, "Novel application of pneumatic flotation cell for efficient graphite recovery from black mass: advancing critical raw material recycling". Thanks to Jim and his wife Lois for judging the many posters.

MEI's Amanda Wills then closed the conference, inviting everyone back to the Vineyard for Flotation '25, from November 17th-20th, 2025, after which we enjoyed a final sundowner in the evening sunshine.

With Yoshiuki Tanaka and Tatsuru Takahashi from the
Japan Organisation for Metals and Energy Security

A welcome guest, Megan Becker (left), MEI Consultant to Process Mineralogy '24

With Antonio Peres, of UFMG, Brazil, who has attended more MEI Conferences than anyone

All the photos on the blog postings, and more, are in a Flotation '23 Album. Please feel free to download photos for your personal use. If you would like to use any photos on a company website, please acknowledge the source (MEI).

Finally, we would really appreciate your comments on the conference, which will aid us in the organisation of future events. Thanks to all of you for making this such a special event!