February Cornish Mining Sundowner with visitors from far afield

A tremendous turnout last night for the February sundowner at Falmouth’s Chain Locker, helped by a welcome break in the relentless rain.

Camborne School of Mines alumni were out in force, with visitors from outside the county, and two from as far away as Malaysia and Kazakhstan.

There is usually a good student presence at the Chain Locker, as it is only a few miles from the Camborne School of Mines in Penryn.  This week, however, they were involved with other activities, as CSM has been holding an International Student Week, with Mining and Geology students from across Europe coming here to explore the School of Mines, gain insight into the projects currently underway in Cornwall and experience the overground and underground activities our region has to offer. Students have been at CSM from International Federation of Mining & Metallurgical Students member institutions in Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands and Finland. The visits have been organised by Harry McTiernan, an Engineering Geology and Geotechnics student at CSM, who provided this photo taken early in the week in Falmouth.

Welsh company Maelgwyn Mineral Services (MMS) has been involved with MEI Conferences, particularly comminution and flotation, for many years and are sponsors of next year's Comminution '27 and Flotation '27. It was great to catch up with Chairman Mike Battersby and General Manager Steve Flatman last night. They are down from Cardiff to visit GT Jones in St Austell, specialists in designing, engineering and manufacturing process equipment, to look into the manufacture of the MMS Ro-Star ultra-fine grinding laboratory and pilot mills. The USA patent has now been granted for the Ro-Star mill concept, and in conjunction with Ersel, a Turkish mill manufacturer, MMS has just completed the construction of a 500kW Ro-Star mill for an industrial application. Mike and Steve are also meeting with Cornwall based Simon Bailey, of Comminution '27 sponsor Global Met Tech, who is helping with testing and scale-up of the Ro-Star, together with advice on the best ceramic grinding media to use.

With Mike and Steve

Finally, it takes big money to start up a mine so very good news that Cornish Metals has received a non-binding Letter of Interest from the Export-Import Bank of the United States outlining potential financing support of up to US$225m for the South Crofty tin project.

The next sundowner is at the Chain Locker on Thursday March 19th, from 5.30pm.

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