Thursday at Flotation '25: student prizes and farewells

Flotation is becoming of great importance in the processing of ores of critical minerals and Charlotte Gibson, of Queen's University, Canada, opened the day with a keynote on lithium mineral flotation. 

Charlotte Gibson at the Maelgwyn Minerals Services booth

The morning sessions were all about the flotation of critical minerals, lithium, rare earths, titanium, vanadium and battery minerals recycling, followed by the final afternoon session on mineralogy, control, bubbles and froths.

Despite it being the final day, there was still a great buzz in the exhibition.

Dariusz Lelinski (right), of FLS, with Kevin Galvin and his two inventions,
the Reflux Flotation Cell and CoarseAIR

Although Molycop has attended other MEI Conferences, this is the first time that they have exhibited at one of the events.  Headquartered in Australia, Molycop provides flotation chemicals and instrumentation, testing and services for flotation circuits.

Making its debut at an MEI Conference, Neyrtec is a French company which offers flotation cells and conditioners.

With Christophe Hellegouarch and Alexis Ancia of Neyrtec

It was great to see three of our sponsors agreeing to sponsor future events: AECI and Promet101 for Flotation '27 and Metcelerate for Comminution '27.

With Natalie Shackleton of AECI

With Stuart Saich of Promet101

With Jan Cilliers and Jenny Wiese of Metcelerate

All too soon the conference ended and in his excellent summing up Jim Finch concluded that the future is in safe hands, considering the number of young people present. This led nicely into the awards of student prizes. Jim has been judging the best oral presentations and he and his wife Lois the best poster presentation. The prizes of copies of the 8th edition of Mineral Processing Technology, were awarded to Gillian Nikka Omaga, of Universite de Lorraine, France for best oral presentation and Ebuka Chukwuma, of McGill University, Canada, for best poster.

Ebuka and Gillian with Jim Finch and me

Also judging the presentations was Osvaldo Bascur, who offered copies of his book The Engineering Science of Mineral Processing. His prizes, for oral presentations, went to Jose Martinez, of Imperial College, UK and Guihua Zheng of China University of Mining & Technology and the University of Queensland.

Osvaldo with Jose and Guihua

In closing the conference Amanda Wills thanked the sponsors, exhibitors, presenters and delegates and invited everyone to attend Flotation '27 in two years time. And then out into the sunshine once more for the farewell drinks function and many more photo opportunities.

With MEI consultants Megan Becker and Aubrey Mainza

Barbara with MEI's longest serving conference delegate Antonio Peres

There are many more MEI photos in the Flotation '25 album. Please feel free to download any photo for your personal use. For commercial use please acknowledge the source- MEI Conferences.

Thanks to all of you for making Flotation '25 such an enjoyable and successful event.