BME Metallurgy is sponsoring MEI’s Flotation ’27 and Hydrometallurgy ’27 conferences for the first time, marking an important step in the company’s growing presence in the international mineral processing community.

The sponsorship is new, but BME Metallurgy and its predecessor business are certainly not new to MEI. Before the business was brought under the BME name, representatives of Protea Mining Chemicals were attending MEI’s flotation conferences in 2009, 2015 and 2023.

What has changed is the position of the business within the BME organisation. Protea Mining Chemicals was brought under the BME brand as part of Omnia’s strategy to create a more integrated mining offering, extending from blasting through to mineral processing. BME Metallurgy now presents itself as much more than a supplier of mining chemicals, offering expertise in flotation, leaching, solvent extraction, ion exchange, metal refining and process optimisation.

That makes the choice of MEI’s Flotation and Hydrometallurgy conferences particularly appropriate. Flotation '27 is directly aligned with BME Metallurgy’s reagent business, while hydrometallurgy is becoming increasingly important as the industry tackles more complex ores and seeks improved routes for recovering critical and battery metals.

There is also a strong sustainability theme. BME has been highlighting its work in green chemistry, chemical circularity, reagent recycling and reducing environmental impacts in mineral processing. Hydrometallurgy, in particular, provides opportunities to develop more selective and potentially more sustainable approaches to metal recovery.

The decision to sponsor both conferences therefore appears to reflect more than a conventional marketing exercise. BME Metallurgy is expanding internationally and seeking to establish itself as a technical partner to the mining industry, rather than simply a chemical supplier. MEI’s highly specialised conferences provide an opportunity to put that expertise directly in front of the metallurgists, researchers, mining companies and technology providers shaping the future of mineral processing.

In this respect, the significance of the sponsorship lies less in BME’s first appearance at an MEI conference, because its predecessor has been attending for many years,  and more in the decision to now put the BME Metallurgy name prominently behind two of the industry’s leading technical forums.

It suggests that BME sees Flotation '27 and Hydrometallurgy '27 not simply as markets for its products, but as important parts of the business it wants to build for the future.

Note that the conference has been rescheduled to September
rather than November as initially announced

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