MEI's Barry Wills: Tuesday at Flotation '25 and a surprise birthday celebration

Tuesday's programme was all about chemical reagents, beginning with a keynote lecture "Beyond reagent trials: new directions in flotation chemistry research" from Liza Forbes representing Australia's JKMRC and the University of Newcastle.

Liza Forbes and Graeme Jameson

The satellite room proving popular again

The two biggest chemical company delegations are from South African reagents companies, sponsors AECI and MetSoP. AECI has become a regular supporter of MEI Conferences, including next year's Process Mineralogy '26 and Critical Minerals '26.

The AECI team

Thermo Fisher Scientific is a first time sponsor of an MEI flotation conference. Although their first time at a flotation conference they have been involved with a number of Process Mineralogy events. The company has launched its next generation Online Sampling and Elemental Analysis Station and the MSA-430 Multi-Stream Analyser, online systems designed for, it says, accurate, real-time elemental analysis of mineral slurry streams in processing plants. It was good to talk to their two representatives, Juan Urfanel (Spain) and Nur Muhamad (Australia).

The exhibition area was buzzing again, with lively discussion during the long breaks.

With delegates from DRC

Conference sponsor Capstone Copper is a copper-focused mining company headquartered in Vancouver, Canada and was formed in 2022 when Capstone Mining merged with Mantos Copper. Peter Amelunxen joined Capstone in April 2022 as Vice President, Technical Services and was promoted to Senior Vice President, Technical Services in August 2023. During the morning break Peter agreed to sponsor not only Flotation '27 but all forthcoming MEI Conferences!

Peter Amelunxen and MEI's Jon

Peter is one of five MEI Young Person's Awards winners at Flotation '25. He was the first recipient of the award back in 2011 and in 2024 he received one of the SME's highest honours, the Antoine Gaudin Award. Zhiyong Gao, the 2018 winner, is now Professor Vice Dean of the School of Minerals Processing and and Bioengineering, at Central South University, China. Although registered for the conference he had visa problems and unfortunately could not make it. Ahmad Hassanzadeh, who won the award in 2020 is now an independent consultant and works as the Chief Research Officer at Maelgwyn Mineral Services. UK. Paulina Vallejos, a researcher at Santa Maria University, Chile was the 2023 winner and Paulina Quintanilla won the award in 2021. She is now a Lecturer at University College London and recently was awarded the Centre for Process Analytics and Control Technology (CPACT) prize for recognition of her achievement in process analytics and control technologies. The prize recognises excellence in terms of scientific achievement, creative thinking and/or engagement between academia and industry. We have good reasons to be proud of these five people.

Delkor has operated under the TAKRAF Group banner since rebranding in October 2020, and has been represented at eight MEI Conferences in the past, sponsoring Precious Metals '10, and Flotation '13 as Tenova Delkor, an Italian company which also operates under the umbrella of the TAKRAF Group.

It was good to catch up with the representatives from sponsor Takraf-Delkor, the combined brand of the TAKRAF Group, a German industrial company specialising in heavy machinery and processing equipment for the mining and materials industries.

Takraf's Klaus Schommarz (Namibia), George Jacob and Shiraz Hussain (South Africa)

During the lunch break I talked to the four delegates from Lihong Chem, a Chinese company at its first MEI Conference. They specialise in cellulose ethers and have a mining grade chemical for flotation applications as a gangue inhibitor or silicate suppressor.

Lunch break with Lihong Chem delegates

Enjoying lunch in the sun

The Vineyard Hotel is not a bad place to be marooned for a couple of days, but last night we relaxed at the Gold Restaurant in the city centre, where a surprise 80th birthday treat was provided for me!