Thursday at Comminution '25

Thursday 3rd April

A busy final day with 17 papers, commencing with a presentation from Chris Greet, of Magotteaux, Australia, a familiar face at all MEI's comminution and flotation conferences. 

Chris was one of 8 delegates from Magotteaux, who regularly sponsor the comminution and flotation series. Their 8-strong team included five representatives from Australia, Belgium, and South Africa and three from Grintec Magotteaux Ceramic Technology, China.

Magotteaux representatives talking to Carl Rohwer of Stone Three Digital, South Africa

UK Company Maelgwyn Mineral Services is also a regular sponsor of the comminution and flotation series and Managing Director Michael Battersby presented a paper on developments on its Ro-Star ultrafine grinding mill for the company, which is represented by four delegates. 

Mike Battersby (2nd left) and his MMS team, with Ibrahim Goktas (2nd right) of Eti Bakir, Türkiye

Another regular sponsor of the comminution and flotation series is CiDRA Minerals Processing and it is always good to catch up with father and son team Joe and Travis Felix, talking below to Gregory Phiri, of ME Elecmetal, Zambia.

Delegates from LKAB, Sweden, taking a morning break

Ion Gurnett had a busy day, presenting three of the four presentations today from Glencore Technology. Ion, senior metallurgist at Glencore Technology, Australia is one of 3 representatives from Australia, with one from South Africa. They are seen below, talking to Jason Waters, of UCT MPTech, South Africa.

Regular comminution sponsor Russell Mineral Equipment, who presented two papers today,  has a big presence in the exhibition area, as always, with a team of eleven from Australia, Ghana, South Africa and UK.

A final coffee break

Global Met Tech was launched two years ago and was well known as a regular sponsor to the comminution series as Keramos. Metallurgical Account Manager Matthew Toll presented a paper today on behalf of the three delegates from Global Met Tech, Australia. 

The company is a supplier of ceramic and steel grinding media products for stirred mills and SAG /ball milling duties.  The team are shown below, talking to Nathi Mtsweni, of Senet, South Africa.

Two other sponsors providing grinding media are Sino Grinding and King's Ceramics and Chemicals, the latter specialising in ceramic beads for stirred mills. 

Chinese company Chemco Advance Material, a sponsor of Comminution '18, is also a manufacturer of ceramic micro-beads.

Sino Grinding's Rod Price and Pieter Theunissen with
Leonardo Espinoza of National University of San Augustin, Peru

Alex Wang and Junfu Wang, of King's Beads, China and Johan Steyn, King's Beads, Australia
with Howard Areington, of STM Minerals, Switzerland

Shengyu Mao and Xingkang Xu, of Chemco Advance Material,
with Mario Calvo of Electrodrives, Spain

After a long final day, Amanda Wills closed the conference, thanking all the sponsors, exhibitors, speakers and delegates for a very fruitful 4 days and inviting everyone back to Cape Town on April 19-22, 2027 for Comminution '27.

MEI is a media partner for the International Mineral Processing Congress, which will be held in the Cape Town Convention Centre from 18-22 October 2026.  MEI's comminution consultant, Prof. Aubrey Mainza, is the chairman of the organising committee and he showed a short video inviting delegates to this event, which was last held in Cape Town in 2003.

Aubrey is a prominent member of the Global Comminution Collaborative (GCC) whose members have played a major part in the conference. At Comminution '23 he presented prizes, on behalf of GCC, to the two students who were judged to have made the best overall student presentations at the conference, Tulio Campos, of Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and Maximilian Tobaben, of Technische Universitat Braunschweig, Germany.

These are two remarkable young researchers, as the prizes this year were awarded once more to Tulio and Maximilian.

Tulio and Maximilian with GCC members

Then it was out into the sunshine once more for the final sundowner and to say our farewells until the next time.

The sun sets on Comminution '25

Finally, a reminder that a summary of the technical papers will be published on the blog in a couple of weeks' time. Authors of papers have also been invited to submit final manuscripts for peer-review, to a virtual special issue of Minerals Engineering.

We would greatly appreciate your views on Comminution '25.