Wednesday at Physical Separation '26

The weather has changed at last, and it was great to see people out on the terrace taking group photos with the glorious Table Mountain backdrop.

Cornish Mining Sundowner regulars: Amanda and Barry Wills (MEI),
Cameron Dyer, David Cadwell and David Mildren (Gravity Mining),
Doug Caffell (Sepro Systems) and Dave Goldburn (Holman-Wilfley)

Despite the improvement in the weather there was a good turnout for the final morning of the conference, which focused on gravity separation, the oldest form of ore concentration.

The biggest group at the event is from sponsor Mineral Technologies representing Australia, Mauritius and South Africa. Mineral Technologies has just completed a transaction to acquire MetQ, a South African based spiral and cyclone supplier. This will give the company a central hub in Africa from which to serve its customers even better. 80% of the world's spirals come from Mineral Technologies.

This has been a week of firsts for sponsor Gravity Mining, manufacturer of Multi-Gravity Separators (MGS), who are based in Cornwall, UK. They have presented for the first time at an MEI conference, with their first exhibition stand, and a first team visit to Cape Town.  Africa, however, is far from new ground for the company, as demand across the continent continues to keep the Cornwall factory at full stretch, with current programmes spanning tin, rare earths, chromite and iron ore. They are proud to be shipping their first MGS unit to Japan in the coming weeks for Incinerator Bottom Ash processing, a new application that demonstrates the breadth of fine gravity separation, unlocking value from streams beyond the reach of conventional flotation.

David Mildren, Cameron Dyer and David Cadwell, of Gravity Mining,
with Albert Jan Venter, of Coremet Mineral Processing, South Africa

Amanda closed the conference after the morning session, thanking our sponsors, the exhibitors. speakers and delegates and inviting attendance at the 10th Physical Separation event, which will be held in the first quarter of 2028, the venue yet to be decided. It may be Cape Town again, or a complete change, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. We would greatly appreciate your thoughts on this.

A summary of the presentations, with links to the draft papers, is scheduled for publication on the blog on Monday May 4th.

An album of photos taken during the week is available and you may download any of these photos for your own use. For commercial use please acknowledge the source as MEI Conferences.

Reactions to the conference on LinkedIn can be found via #PhysicalSeparation26.

If you would like weekly alerts to MEI blog postings by email you can subscribe by adding your email address to this link.

#MEIBlog