MEI's Barry Wills: Monday at Flotation '25

Tuesday, 18 November 2025

Monday at Flotation '25

MEI's Jon Wills opened Flotation '25 this morning, welcoming the first of the 400 delegates from 32 countries to MEI's biggest ever conference.

Chris Greet is a familiar face at MEI's flotation and comminution conferences. He is Manager Minerals Processing Research at Magotteaux, Australia and leads their technical efforts investigating the effect of grinding chemistry on downstream processes. Opening the conference, in his keynote lecture he discussed the methods employed for selecting media for use in regrind mills, and provided some insights into the pulp chemistry of the slurries leaving these mills and how this affects the flotation response. He looked at solutions for restoring the pulp chemistry and improving flotation performance. This was followed by presentations on working circuits. There will be a summary of all technical session presentations in a few weeks' time.

Due to the high numbers, the satellite room proved popular, where presentations from the main conference room were streamed and opposite this room was the display of 92 posters, which attracted much interest during the long breaks, as did the 30 exhibition booths (see YouTube video).

Conference sponsor Metcelerate is a specialist training and professional-development organisation focused on the mining and minerals processing sector. They offer a multi-course training programme for early-career mineral-processing engineers. I was pleased to drop by their booth, manned by Jenny Weise and Jan Cilliers, and to congratulate Jan, Professor of Minerals Processing at Imperial College, London as the 2025 recipient of the American Society for Mining, Metallurgy & Exploration's (SME) Antoine Gaudin Award for scientific or engineering contributions that further understanding of the technology of mineral processing.

Jan is one of seven winners of the award at the conference, with Peter Amelunxen (2023), Cyril O'Connor (2022), Kevin Galvin (2017), Osvaldo Bascur (2013), Graeme Jameson (2012) and Jim Finch (1997). I managed to catch up with four of these award winners at last night's welcoming function, and hope to get the other three together during the week.

Gaudin Award winners Jim Finch, Jan Cilliers, Kevin Galvin and Osvaldo Bascur

Lunch break: the MEI team with University of South Australia students

One of Prof. Graeme Jameson's inventions, the Concorde Cell, is licensed to international company Metso, represented by a team of 17 at the conference. They are long-time MEI sponsors including Comminution '27 and they were the first of our twenty four sponsors to sign up for sponsorship of Flotation '27. In the photo below Jon shakes hands-on the deal with Charles Ntsele, Vice- President of Mneral Sales and marketeer Chantel Fourie.

An excellent first day ended in the evening sunshine for the first of our sundowners in the hotel gardens, where we were joined by a welcome guest, Prof. Aubrey Mainza, from nearby University of Cape Town. Aubrey is MEI consultant to Comminution '27 and is Chairman of next year's International Mineral Processing Congress in Cape Town, where MEI will be represented as media partners.