Addressing the skills shortage- catch 'em early!

In my recent postings on the skills shortage in the minerals industry (postings of 25th August and 9th September) I highlighted the need to encourage young people to join the mining industry by recruiting young scientists at school leaving age.

But mine surveyor Jake Harris has taken a different approach, with the publication of two books aimed at young children, taking them on rhyming adventures in underground and open-pit mines, educational journeys that help explain the machines and processes behind mining operations. 

The books are perfect for those working in the industry, or those wanting to educate their children on where metals and minerals come from.

Working Deep Down Underground, the first of the two books, is the product of just over 14 months of work between Jake and the popular mining animators, Mining Boom. The words were penned by Jake during flights back and forth to his mine site in Western Australia. 

Working Deep Down In The Pit is the second installment of the book series and it explores what goes on in open pit mining. Jake worked in Kalgoorlie's open pits in the early 2010's and this helped him write the book.

Announcing Physical Separation '26

Physical Separation '26 will be the 9th in MEI's popular physical separation conference series. The first seven were held in Falmouth, UK but Physical Separation '24 was held 3 months ago in Cape Town and we will be back there again in April 2026 for Physical Separation '26, with the support of our media partners International Mining and Minerals Engineering.

Relaxing at Cape Town's beautiful Vineyard Hotel

In his keynote lecture at Physical Separation '24, James Agenbag, of Mineral Technologies, South Africa, showed why physical separation in mineral processing is of critical importance, as it is the most energy-efficient, chemical-free means of sorting and upgrading minerals. It will become an even more vital first-stage in future flow sheets. In addition, physical separation will also become a critical step in the recycling of batteries, cables, cell-phones and other electronics as we start to close the metal loop and start to re-use more and mine less.

So if you are involved in any physical separation activities -  gravity separation, magnetic and electrical separation, electronic sorting, sizing, classification, solid-liquid separation- then do consider submitting an abstract to the conference. Final papers, which are invited after the conference, will be considered for publication in a special issue of Minerals Engineering after peer-review.

The Vineyard Hotel Conference Centre provides an ideal opportunity for exhibiting your products and services, and 10 booths are available for rental in the coffee and lunch break area. If you decide to exhibit you may also be interested in our sponsorship package, which will give you much exposure before and during the conference.

Coffee break in the exhibition area at Physical Separation '24

MEI Conferences have the reputation of being relaxed, informal events, the sundowners in the Vineyard gardens providing ideal networking opportunities at the end of the daily sessions.

The venue for the conference dinner will be announced later but we can guarantee that it will be a "fun" event!

Physical Separation '24 delegates at the conference dinner in central Cape Town

And finally, an added bonus, Physical Separation '26 will be followed by the 2-day Mineral Processing Circuits '26. Delegates staying on for this will receive discounted registration rates. Full details of this conference will be published soon.

#PhysicalSeparation26

Addressing the skills shortage: memories of Geoff Cox and MIMCU

The posting of 25th August highlighted the skills shortage in the mining industry, and a comment from the UK Mining Education Forum (UKMEF) said that "what we can all agree on though is we need to see some significant changes in how we 'market' the industry to attract future generations into the sector". I replied asking if there were any views on what these "significant changes" might be, but still await response. The UKMEF is a collaboration of mine operators, mining supply chain, health & safety executives and academia and it would be good to know what they are actively doing to recruit young people into the industry. 

Geoff Cox

In the late 1970s I was involved with a similar organisation, the Minerals Industry Manpower and Careers Unit (MIMCU), which was founded and run almost single handedly by the late and great Geoff Cox, asssisted by the admirable Eileen Barrett.

Geoff Cox inspired people with his enthusiasm and he and Eileen visited Camborne School of Mines a number of times, to arrange weekend courses at CSM for not only 6th form students, but also their teachers. It was a great success, and it inspired me to travel around the country talking to school students and staff about the virtues of mineral processing.

At New Mills school, Derbyshire in 1980

The University of Birmingham was also very much involved with MIMCU and it was on a weekend course  to the Ecton Hill copper-lead mine in Staffordshire where I first met the very enthusiastic Terry Veasey, a senior lecturer at Birmingham. Geoff Cox had been especially pro-active in developing a mineral processing option within the Nuffield A-level chemistry curriculum, enabling several thousand students and their teachers to visit the study centre and mine at Ecton Hill.

One of the Ecton Hill courses with Geoff Cox, kneeeling centre

The use of an abandoned copper mine in the Peak District as an educational resource was a realisation of Geoff's vision. On a visit to the Peak District in the early 1960s he saw the "Folly" a building with a green copper spire,  and decided there and then that he had to buy it. This he did, in 1963. Nobody was more astonished than he was to find the entrance to an ancient copper mine in his back garden. Geoff travelled the world on mining business, but I am sure that it was his educational work at Ecton where he found most fulfilment.

In 1970 Geoff was asked to establish,and became the Director of, MIMCU, based at the Royal School of Mines. He established a successful programme to train science teachers through a series of 7-day courses,  The idea was that these courses would establish links between schools, the mining industry, and university departments. Between 1971 and 1978 the programme enabled several hundred teachers to bring groups of sixth-form students to weekend courses introducing them to modern industrial methods that were relevant to school syllabuses. In the 1980s he developed a series of study tours to mining operations in Canada, Scandinavia and elsewhere for teachers and students. These visits showed participants by personal experience the nature, scale, and technological capabilities of the industry, and the prospects for a career in mining.

Geoff had endless enthusiasm for taking parties of school and university students underground and explaining the practicalities of mining. It was his concept that a visit to Ecton Hill should provide not just an insight into historical technologies and activities, but should also stimulate the visitor to consider current and future problems in science, technology, economics, and resource ecology. The techniques established by the people who worked with MIMCU proved to be a cost-effective means of education.

MIMCU itself was funded, at times up to £150,000/year, by large multinational mining corporations including Rio Tinto, Anglo American, and Consolidated Goldfields. However, towards the end of the 1980s with consolidation and reorganisation of the minerals industry, the funding steadily diminished and by 1990 had dried up to the extent that MIMCU was forced to close.  

After the closure of MIMCU Geoff supported the costs of maintenance of the centre out of his own pocket.   Sadly in 1997 he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and needed steadily more support from his wife Elizabeth and his niece Lisa Morrow, but his mind remained sharp and his enthusiasm for mining education undimmed until his death in 2003. However, the problems and costs of running courses in a disused mine were increasing, especially the problems faced by all educational fieldwork today - safety and insurance matters. An Adventure Activities Licence for underground trips partially addressed these problems, but the foot-and-mouth epidemic in 2001 forced a complete suspension of the courses.

I feel fortunate to have known and worked with Geoff Cox and Eileen Barrett. Geoff devoted nearly half his life to giving inspiration to teachers and students alike and I just wish there were more visionaries such as him around today. But of course, no matter how many youngsters are inspired by mining, if there are no university departments to take them, then all is to no avail. In the 1980s undergraduate mining degrees in the UK were offered by the Universities of Nottingham, Leeds, Strathclyde, Newcastle, Cardiff, North Staffs Polytechnic, Camborne School of Mines and Royal School of Mines. Now only CSM remains, reinstating its mining engineering degree course from 2025.

Special Issue of Minerals Engineering honours Professor Graeme Jameson

Flotation '23 got off to a perfect start last November with a keynote lecture from Graeme Jameson, Distinguished Emeritus Professor at the University of Newcastle, Australia, who is probably our profession's most prolific and respected innovator in froth flotation. the inventor of the Jameson Cell, the NovaCell and the Concorde Cell. In 2018 he was honoured by one of the most prestigious organisations in the world, the Royal Society, which boasts a fellowship of 1,600 of the world’s most eminent scientists. 

In his keynote at Flotation '23 “Mostly froth and bubble – a lifetime of flotation research” he talked about his involvement with flotation since he first saw a flotation cell when he took his first job in the assay laboratory of a tin smelter in Sydney, Australia over seventy years ago.

Four months prior to the Cape Town conference, in July 2023, there was a flotation symposium in his honour at the University of Newcastle, Australia, with many eminent speakers, seen in the photo below. 

The symposium was attended by 130 delegates from 10 countries and I am pleased to see that the papers presented at the meeting have been published in a special issue of Minerals Engineering, now available on ScienceDirect. The Special Issue is edited by Dr. Seher Ata of the  University of New South Wales, Australia, and features papers that reflect Professor Jameson's influence and transformative ideas, covering a spectrum of topics related to froth flotation. 

Last year Prof Jameson was 87 and it was intended to be his retirement year, but I have a feeling we will see him, as always, in Cape Town next year at Flotation '25. 

August summary: people power and beautiful places

Two faces of Britain were manifested in the first week of the month.

Inspirational in Paris, where team GB and Northern Ireland enjoyed a tremendous Olympics with some amazing athletic performances.

And despicable across the channel where riots in UK cities were led by far-right thugs, sparked, of all things, by the murders of three little girls in Southport. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said "To those who feel targeted because of the colour of your skin or your faith, I know how frightening this must be. I want you to know that this violent mob do not represent our country. We will bring them to justice". 

Under the same flag!

Swift justice was indeed delivered with hefty jail sentences and a huge police presence. But what was heartening was the huge anti-racism protests by thousands of British people, who came out onto the streets to counter the minority of cowardly individuals who had been emboldened by extremists, who had seized the opportunity to fan the flames of far-right hatred and violence on the back of the most awful tragedy and the spread of misinformation. The show of unity was a welcome reminder that the rioters don't speak for the country. 

The brief episode, which led many overseas governments to advise their citizens to avoid travel to the UK, and the ludicrous boss of X (Twitter), Elon Musk, to tweet that civil war was inevitable, thus came to an end, highlighting the true nature of the British people.

Source The Times 9th August

Cornwall is like another planet. We heard of the riots only via the media, although the closest rioting was just across the border in Plymouth.

On the second weekend of the month Barbara and I headed to Great Britain's most southerly area, the Lizard Peninsula, which was once a geological enigma before the discovery of tectonic plates, as its rocks are very much different from those of the rest of Cornwall (posting of 25 July 2010). We walked between Mullion and Poldhu Coves. Between the two, Polurrian Cove marks the geological boundary between Cornwall and the Lizard, the rocks on the north of the cove being Devonian slates, and on the south hornblende schists of the Lizard (posting of 13 March 2011). 

Polurrian Cove

The impressive south coast cliffs between Mullion and Poldhu

An early morning walk to Mullion

Mullion Cove harbour

The Marconi monument
near Poldhu Cove

Apart from its beauty this is an interesting stretch of coast line, as it is famous as the location of the Poldhu Wireless Station, Guglielmo Marconi’s transmitter for the first transatlantic radio signal. It was common belief that radio waves could only travel in straight lines, so could not navigate the earth's curvature, but Marconi was determined to disprove this. After building a transmitter at Poldhu, Marconi and two assistants travelled to Newfoundland and on 12 December 1901 they received an extremely short signal from Poldhu (three dots representing the code letter 's').

In 1912 Marconi was given a free ticket to travel on the new ocean liner RMS Titanic but was too busy at the time and ironically travelled on the RMS Lusitania (torpedoed off the Old Head of Kinsale on 7 May 1915).  Although many lives were lost when the Titanic sank on 15 April 1912, those saved had radio to thank as the Marconi Station at Chatham, Massachusetts was able to alert RMS Carpathia to pick up survivors.

Cornwall undoubtedly has some of the world's finest scenery, but so does Switzerland's Jungrau region, where Jon and family spent a few days before moving on to Lake Garda in Italy. There was some nostalgia in seeing the grandchildren enjoying the magnificent view of Lake Brienz from Schynige Platte, as it was from here that I commenced my first ever hike, the stunning 16km trail to First. 

It was an unforgettable hike, even though it was 63 years ago!  It was part of the itinerary on my school trip to Switzerland, my first time out of England. It's hard to imagine that back in 1961 a school could even contemplate taking a party of 70 school children on a long, hard hike such as this. There were no trainers then, we all had leather shoes, no sun protection and carried no water! But after 6 hours we somehow made it to First, and then the chairlift (now a gondola) down to Grindelwald and the train back to Interlaken.

Barbara and I must have travelled to and fro by train between Truro and London Paddington hundreds of times, but only occasionally do we take the final few miles from Truro to the terminus at Penzance. It is a fascinating journey as it takes us through the old mining area of Camborne-Redruth and a landscape dotted by the ruined 19th century engine houses, We did this on August 26th, then walked the 3 and a half miles from Penzance to Mousehole for our 57th Anniversary lunch at one of our favourite restaurants, 2 Fore Street.

The busy fishing harbour at Newlyn, between Penzance and Mousehole

1967 and 2024