Sunday in Windhoek

After a very long journey from Cornwall, it was great to relax in the beautiful gardens of the Windhoek Country Club yesterday afternoon, where we met up with a few early conference delegates, Jack Carr and Nick Wilshaw, of Grinding Solutions Ltd, UK, and Naomi Boxall and Anna Kaksonen of CSIRO, Australia.

Windhoek Country Club

In the evening we took taxis into Windhoek city and to one of Namibia's most famous eating places, Joe's Beerhouse, to dine on zebra, kudu and springbok steaks.

Nick Wilshaw and Jack Carr with Jon Wills

Naomi and John Boxall

Barbara, Barry and Amanda Wills

Twitter @barrywills

Prof. Dee Bradshaw 1958-2018: a great ambassador for women in mining

It is with great sadness that I report that Dee Bradshaw, Emeritus Professor at the University of Cape Town (UCT), passed away last night after her long and very brave battle with cancer.

Dee was a great friend of the family for many years, and it was only in April that she called in at Comminution '18, where she wished it be known to everyone that her cancer had returned and that she was terminally ill. Dee bore her illness with amazing fortitude and spirit and she was a wonderful ambassador for the role of women in modern mining. I could write a great deal about Dee, but would not be able to better the appreciation of her by Anita Parbhakar-Fox, which was published only 3 months ago.

Dee was a great fan and supporter of the MEI blog, so I can think of a no more suitable way to show our appreciation of her than by this collection of photos which have appeared on the blog over many years. She was always smiling, and in many cases advising, and enjoying the company of, young people, many of who she personally mentored.

Dee will be greatly missed. She was passionate about the development of students and believed in giving them an opportunity to travel and learn. Shortly before her death, she set up the Dee Bradshaw and Friends International Travel Scholarship for students who display academic merit and are registered for a postgraduate qualification in the field of the minerals sector at UCT. The purpose of the proposed travel to an approved international institution is to enhance research and education capacity, skills and experience. The successful student will receive support for travel and subsistence for one trip during their studies. Full details can be obtained from: Mary Hilton (mary.hilton@uct.ac.za).

Our thoughts are with Dee's husband Mike, and family, at this very difficult time.

At Comminution '18 with me, Barbara, Amanda and Jon

With UCT's Prof. J-P Franzidis, at Comminution '18

At Flotation '17

With Norman Lotter at Process Mineralogy '17

With South African delegates at Sustainable Minerals '16 in Falmouth

Dinner with Dee and Mike at their Cape Town home, April 2016

 

With young people at Flotation '11

With Jenny Wiese and Kari Heiskanen at the IMPC in Chile, 2014

In Denver with Sara Schwarz and Mark Richardson for SME '11

With Jan Cilliers in Brisbane for IMPC 2010

At Process Mineralogy '10 with me, Norman Lotter and Megan Becker



At Flotation '09 with delegates who had attended all the century's major flotation conferences:
Graeme Jameson, Dan Alexander, Jim Finch, Antonio Peres and Stephen Neethling

Reagents '04 in Falmouth, with Kathryn Hadler, Jenny Wiese, Barbara, Jon and Amanda

And our first meeting with Dee in 1991 in Cornwall for the first Reagents conference

Update of 26th July 2018: Many thanks to Prof. Janusz Laskowski for sending these photos of him and Dee, taken in 1999:

 

All set for Namibia

The MEI team arrive in Namibia this weekend for next week's Biohydromet '18 and Sustainable Minerals '18 at the Windhoek Country Club. It's not too late to register!

 As always there will be daily postings on the blog and on Twitter (#Biohydromet18 and #SustainableMinerals18).

I hope to have full technical reports on the conferences published early in the week beginning June 24th.

Memories of the 1988 International Mineral Processing Congress in Stockholm

I attended my first International Mineral Processing Congress 30 years ago today, the XVI IMPC in Stockholm, Sweden. I have missed only one since then, the Rome meeting in 2000, which Amanda attended on behalf of MEI.

The opening session at the Stockholm Convention Centre

The Stockholm IMPC was fairly small by recent standards, with 550 delegates and 177 papers. In recent years quality has been sacrificed somewhat in a race to be the 'biggest' IMPC, the last congress in Quebec, having 650 papers.

I remember the conference dinner in Stockholm being a rather formal and dour event (this was well before the 2003 IMPC in Cape Town, which showed that IMPC dinners could be fun events).

Having fun at the conference dinner, with Neil Collins and Phil Parsonage,
of Warren Spring Laboratories, UK

The meeting was notable for the launching of the Mozley Multi-Gravity Separator (MGS).

Billy Chan demonstrates the MGS, with Sales Manager Don Hepburn and Richard Mozley

It was also at the IMPC that Minerals Engineering was first showcased by Pergamon Press.  The first issue of the journal had been published in January of that year and quality papers were beginning to trickle in, but I detected a degree of coldness in Stockholm from the ‘old guard’ of International Journal of Mineral Processing contributors. This climaxed with an approach from a senior executive from Elsevier, who strongly advised me to abandon Minerals Engineering, as there was no place for another mineral processing journal of similar scope. Time proved him wrong!

With Stephanie Margetts of Pergamon Press

All in all I enjoyed the 6 days of the IMPC, particularly socialising in the city by the light of the midnight sun.

Twitter @barrywills

MEI Award winner Grant Ballantyne proving his worth!

It was good to hear that the Coalition for Eco-Efficient Comminution (CEEC) has been awarded an AUS$469,000, three-year funding agreement with the Queensland Government and METS Ignited (an Australian Government Industry Growth Centre) to roll out their latest offering – the CEEC Advanced Energy Curves Project (MEI Online). And particularly good to hear that JKMRC's Senior Research Fellow, Dr. Grant Ballantyne, will lead the energy curves enhancement work.

Members of the CEEC Advanced Energy Curves Project team:
Neville Plint, Director of JKMRC's Sustainable Minerals Institute;
Alison Keogh, CEEC CEO; Tim-Napier-Munn, Emeritus Prof of JKMRC;
Grant Ballantyne and Alice Clark, Director of SMI Production Centres

Grant has played the principal role in the development of the internationally-supported comminution energy curve tool which is widely used by industry for energy benchmarking and the optimisation of comminution circuits. This novel tool incorporates data from nearly 60% of world copper operations, over 30% of world gold operations, and significant proportions of other commodities.

Only a couple of month's ago Grant was the recipient of the 2017 MEI Young Person's Award for his endeavours, and it is great to see that our confidence in him has been justified.

The CEEC is an Industry Advocate for three upcoming MEI Conferences, Sustainable Minerals '18, Physical Separation '19 and Comminution '20.

Twitter @barrywills

Outotec is the 10th sponsor of Flotation '19

We welcome Outotec as a sponsor of next year's Flotation '19 in Cape Town.  This will be the 8th time that this major international company has sponsored MEI's flotation series. Outotec is also a sponsor of the Biohydrometallurgy '18 and Sustainable Minerals '18 conferences in Namibia.

The Outotec delegation at Flotation '17

The latest updates on Flotation '19 are at #Flotation19.

Current Flotation '19 sponsors