June Cornish Mining Sundowner- new and familiar faces and a great historical video

Despite the Cornish 'mizzle' there was a good turnout last night at Falmouth's Chain Locker for the June mining sundowner.

For the first time we almost had a full MEI team present. Jon, in the Luxembourg office, was missing but it was good to see Amanda and her son, Will Collins, who recently joined the MEI team.

As well as a few current Camborne School of Mines students, it was good to see a number of "old boys", who always have interesting stories to tell.

With CSM alumni Connor Spollen, Andy Wetherelt, Alun Jones,
Mark Alcock, Mark Shimmield and Nick Wilshaw

I was particularly pleased to see Connor Spollen, who graduated in mineral processing in 1990 and has had extensive experience in Chile, Ireland, Canada and USA. He is now based in USA as CEO of Jervois, a leading global supplier of responsibly sourced and produced cobalt and nickel materials. 

With Connor and son

It is 35 years since I last saw Connor. His final year project at CSM was on mass balancing and he produced a paper, co-authored by me and maths lecturer Nigel Powell, which was presented at the SME Annual Meeting in Denver. After the conference we headed for Copper Mountain where he, Barbara and Nigel skied for the first time.

Denver, 1991. Connor right and Nigel left

Sundowner regulars Dave and Treve Milden of Gravity Mining were missing last night, but were at last week's UK Mining Conference in Cornwall. Dave was also at Physical Separation '26 (YouTube video) in Cape Town in April, promoting the world's largest gravity concentrator, the C910 MGS.

The Multi-Gravity Separator (MGS) was invented by the late, great Richard Mozley and is now manufactured by Gravity Mining, a sponsor of Physical Separation '26. The C910 is a far cry from the MGS which was launched in Stockholm in 1988 by Richard and his team.

C910, and prototype MGS in 1988

Richard Mozley 1993

Dave came across this great video last week which was made in 1993 two years before Richard's death. It details the development of the MGS on the Wheal Jane concentrator, near Truro, and features Richard Mozley and two familiar faces at the mining sundowners, Kevin Ross, who was Managing Director of Carnon Consolidated, who owned the mine, and Mike Hallewell, who was then Metallurgical Superintendent. The MGS helped the concentrator at Wheal Jane to continue operating after mining stopped in 1991, as it processed ore brought in from the South Crofty tin mine. It finally closed in 1998, when South Crofty shut down. 

Mike and Kevin, 1993

Mike Hallewell continues his involvement with South Crofty. He is consulting metallurgist to Cornish Metals Inc., the mining developer whose success largely depends on successfully reopening the historic tin mine and benefiting from long-term demand for critical minerals. Mike will be a co-author of a paper at Critical Minerals '26 in Cape Town in November. Presented by James Strongman of Redruth company Petrolab, the paper will assess the economic impact of ore sorting, which will be used to pre-concentrate the ore at South Crofty.  Petrolab is a sponsor of the conference, and for Process Mineralogy '26 which precedes it, and James will be presenting papers at both events.

Amanda and Will with James Strongman

It was an excellent sundowner last night and I look forward to more surprises at the next one, which will be on Thursday July 16th at the Chain Locker, from 5.30pm.

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