Monday at Physical Separation '24

Jon opened Physical Separation '24 on Monday morning, welcoming our 80 delegates from 17 countries and thanking our sponsors, Steinert, Comex Group, Conundrum and Capstone Copper and our media partners International Mining and Minerals Engineering and Industry Advocate the Critical Minerals Association.

James Agenbag, of Mineral Technologies, South Africa, then got the conference off to a fine start with a keynote lecture emphasising the increasing importance of physical separation methods, and the challenge that we face in recruiting more young people into the industry and educating them on the crucial importance of the mining industry, as the future supply of critical minerals may not keep up with demand. 

The keynote was the prelude to 11 presentations during the day, which will be summarised in a couple of weeks' time.

I caught up with James during the coffee break in the exhibition area, with his colleagues from Mineral Technologies. and Dave Goldburn, of Holman Wilfley, UK, our only other delegate from Cornwall. Mineral Technologies supply a wide range of mineral processing services and equipment and  is the Southern African agent for Cornwall's Holman Wilfley, world leader in the manufacture of shaking tables.

With Dave Goldburn, James Agenbag, Beatrice Mohononi and Paul Albertyn

In the Comex booth Jacek Kolacz of Comex, Norway was talking to Dion Lusinga and Shannon McEwan of IMS Engineering, South Africa and Michael Borger of Covalent Lithium, Australia. The Comex Group is one of the conference sponsors. The company is a market leader in the field of sorting with a constantly expanding range of equipment, offering an optical sorting system based on comprehensive image analysis with advanced image processing functions.

Dion, Shannon, Jacek and Michael

A break for lunch

There is probably no more stunning a view from a conference centre than that from the Vineyard, with its backdrop of Table Mountain, and outside the conference room I caught up with Dani de Manielle of IHC Mining, South Africa and Aylin Acar Ademoglu, of IHC Mining, Netherlands. IHC is well known in the alluvial mining field, as a supplier of dredges and mineral jigs.

We timetabled an early finish today hoping to take some advantage of any sun that might be on offer, so we were lucky with the unseasonable weather to enjoy the late afternoon sundowner in the hotel gardens.

The Cornish contingent: Dave Goldburn with the MEI team

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