The course was followed by a short workshop from conference sponsor Glencore Technology on The Evolution of the Jameson Cell: Smarter Designs, Broader Applications, presented by Ryan Jones and Adam Price and attended by around 75 delegates.
All leading up to the late afternoon reception, where we welcomed the first of our 400 delegates from 32 countries to Flotation '25.
The MEI team is now safely in Cape Town, joined by an additional member, Amanda’s elder son, Will, who is spending a week with us on work experience as he considers becoming the next-generation partner in MEI.
Barbara and I arrived at midday on Friday after a surprisingly seamless rail journey from Falmouth to Heathrow, followed by the late-evening BA flight to Cape Town International (CTI).
Will caught the early-evening flight on Friday, having landed at Heathrow just three hours earlier after his holiday in Thailand. He should have been accompanied by Amanda, but travelling from Cornwall is rarely straightforward; after a gruelling ten-hour coach journey to the airport, she missed the flight. Fortunately, she managed to transfer to the later one and arrived at CTI yesterday lunchtime, around the same time as Jon, who arrived from Luxembourg via Istanbul on Turkish Airlines.
Now settled into the Vineyard Hotel, we enjoyed drinks together last night at the Waterfront, at the Ferrymans, followed by dinner at the Harbour House restaurant. We are now all set to welcome the first of our 400 delegates to Flotation '25 today.
Although a year and a half away, Comminution '27 has got off to a flying start, with 17 sponsors already on board.
The latest sponsor, FLS, is also a sponsor of next week's Flotation '25, and one of our most regular supporters over many years.
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| FLS at Comminution '25 |
FLS has positioned itself strongly in the comminution space, especially in technologies that deliver energy savings and reduced grinding media.
We can expect to hear much about developments in high pressure grinding rolls (HPGR) at the conference. HPGRs are among the most energy-efficient comminution technologies (in particular less grinding media, lower power consumption) and FLS has secured an order for two of the world’s largest HPGRs (3.0 m diameter × 2.0 m width) for a new iron-ore concentrator in India, with installation and commissioning expected in 2026. With this order FLS reports 15 HPGR orders or commitments in 2024.
Also in 2024 FLS secured an order to deliver a dry grinding solution for an iron-ore pellet plant in Oman. This included two dry grinding mills, a wet grinding ball mill, high-efficiency air-separators, hydrocyclones and pumps, the focus being on reduced water usage in a water-stressed region. The company already have 80+ sites with over 150 dry grinding mills/air separators on various ores.
Reduction of energy and water will feature heavily at Comminution '27, and we expect to hear more of reducing loads on comminution circuits via pre-concentration, particular as Steinert, a leading player in sensor-based sorting, is one of the 17 sponsors.
Circular hydrometallurgy is an emerging approach in metal extraction and recovery that applies circular economy principles (reduce, reuse, recycle, and recover) to traditional hydrometallurgical processes. It is a sustainable, closed-loop approach to metal recovery that turns waste into a resource, integrating hydrometallurgical science with circular economy thinking.
Circular hydrometallurgy is becoming a cornerstone perspective for extractive metallurgical processes, and in particular for the processing of critical minerals, and their associated metals and materials. In a keynote lecture at Critical Minerals '26, Jacques Eksteen, a Professor in the WA School of Mines, at Curtin University, Australia, will review examples in the development of novel processes for some critical minerals essential in the Energy Transition, such as nickel, cobalt and copper, and associated precious metals such as PGMs, gold and silver.
The Energy Transition towards cleaner forms of non-fossil energy requires a complete rethink as to how we design our processes from the perspectives of energy utilisation, the use of benign reagents, the recycling and reuse of reagents and water, and valorisation of traditional waste products. The circularity around waste products, water and reagents reuse will be emphasised, while still ensuring economic feasibility.
Prof. Eksteen will provide examples where amino acids have been used in hydrometallurgical pathways to extract and refine a variety of critical metals from their ores, tailings, concentrates and from various technospheric (i.e. human-derived) waste materials. This will be an interesting precurser to the keynote lecture from Prof. Chun-Xia Zhao. who will show how her team at the University of Adelaide are developing designer peptides, short chains of amino acids, tailored for specific mineral binding and flotation applications.
Jacques Eksteen is the Manager of the Critical Minerals Metals and Materials for the Energy Transition research group at Curtin University. He is also the Interim Research Director for the Critical Metals for Critical Industries CRC. In addition, he was the Program Lead for Technology Readiness Level Progression in the Critical Minerals and Resources Technology Trailblazer, and held the roles Chief Scientist, Chief Operating Officer, and Research Director of the Future Battery Industries Cooperative Research Centre Ltd. He was Director of the Gold Technology Group and project manager of the AMIRA 420 project from 2012 to 2019. Jacques holds a PhD in Extractive Metallurgical Engineering and has 32 years of experience in industry and academia. He has published over 200 journal papers and conference proceedings and is a listed inventor on 10 patent families.
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The monthly Cornish Mining Sundowner postings include news of any mining developments down here in Cornwall. As I will be in Cape Town this month I will miss the sundowner, so I am happy to report here of the exciting new development at Cornish Lithium's Trelavour demonstration plant, near St. Austell in East Cornwall, where in a first for the UK, it has started production of refined lithium hydroxide monohydrate (LHM), extracted from zinnwaldite, a lithium containing mica found in the decomposed granite which forms kaolin, and mined in the St. Austell region as china clay. LHM is a key raw material for advanced, high-energy lithium-ion batteries which form the foundations of nearly all modern-day electronics on which we all rely - from electric vehicles (EVs) and smartphones to energy storage and drone technology.
Cornwall is home to the largest lithium deposits in Europe and has enough lithium to power at least 50% of all EVs expected to be produced in the UK by 2030. This announcement marks a major advance in UK industrial capability that will help secure a domestic supply of a key material for UK industry. Currently over 60-70% of the world’s lithium refining takes place in China.
In an end-to-end industrial process, the company is re-purposing a former china clay quarry and, using innovative low-carbon processing technology, producing refined LHM on a single brownfield industrial site at Trelavour. The custom-built facility incorporates all processing stages from crushing and grinding the rock, separation of the lithium-bearing minerals and processing of these minerals to produce a refined lithium hydroxide monohydrate.
Launched only a year ago, the plant uses patented, low-carbon processing technology developed over many years of intensive research and development. In early 2025, Cornish Lithium successfully acquired full intellectual property and associated patents from Australian company Lepidico. The Lepidico process has shown to be highly effective and has now been fully optimised by improvements made at the Demonstration Plant. Cornish Lithium plans to market the technology internationally given the success that has been achieved in recent months. The new technology, incorporated into the demonstration plant operates at atmospheric pressure and at moderate temperature, significantly reducing carbon emissions and helping to set a new sustainability standard in the sector
Following the success of the demonstration plant, Cornish Lithium plans to build a full-scale lithium processing and refining plant with an annual capacity of up to 10,000 tonnes of LHM, which is expected to commence full-scale production in 2029.
Let's not forget, however, that another company in East Cornwall, British Lithium, is also extracting lithium from the decomposed granite at a nearby china clay pit, owned by Imerys, a French multinational company, which, in 2023, acquired an 80% stake in British Lithium. The transaction brought together Imerys’ expertise in mining, R&D and process development capabilities, as well as its lithium mineral resources, with British Lithium’s bespoke technology and state-of-the-art lithium pilot plant, which last year produced battery-grade lithium carbonate.
Lithium carbonate is a major product, the foundation of the lithium industry, but for many high-end EV batteries lithium hydroxide is the preferred precursor, so refining to hydroxide gives access to these higher value battery markets. Cornish Lithium's aim of producing battery-grade lithium hydroxide signals that they are aiming at a more advanced stage of processing and potentially higher margin / higher specification product.
By contrast, British Lithium’s achievement is important, but is at the carbonate stage. The step to hydroxide is one further stage of processing, so in principle Cornish Lithium is one further step along the chain. The fact that Cornish Lithium can produce lithium hydroxide domestically is a “first” in the UK context and by-passing a lithium carbonate stage aligns Cornwall with the trend for high-performance battery chemistries.
We are pleased that Weir Minerals, who sponsored Comminution '25, will be sponsoring Comminution '27 in 18 months time. The company has come a long way over the last 20 years, when it was best known for slurry-handling equipment, with hydrocyclones, pumps, and valves its core offerings.
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| Weir marketing their hydrocyclones at Hydrocyclones '03 in Cape Town |
The company has significantly broadened into comminution equipment over the past decade and now positions itself as a "total process partner" across the entire minerals processing flowsheet, including comminution, classification, transport, and tailings management. Weir has invested heavily in, and now manufactures or supports, several categories of comminution machinery.
Weir’s Enduron® High Pressure Grinding Rolls (HPGR) line is central to its sustainability push, marketed as using up to 40% less energy than traditional grinding mills. To complement its Enduron® range of HPGRs, Weir has developed a robust range of crushers and screens under the same premium brand, now further strengthened by its in-house screening media. Weir’s large Enduron Elite double-deck banana screens have been in high demand, and will soon be produced at the company’s Alrode facility south of Johannesburg.
Large vibrating screens are vital to complement large capacity crushing plants and HPGR circuits and the Enduron Elite range is playing an important role in hard rock mining developments throughout Africa.
The latest generation of Weir’s Enduron cone crushers and jaw crushers has also just been introduced.
A key factor behind the success of Enduron HPGRs and the complementary crushers and screens in the circuit has been the rising cost of electricity, affecting not only South Africa but many other countries in Africa. Mines are adopting HPGR circuits as an energy efficient alternative to the traditional semi-autogenous grinding (SAG) mill circuits.
At Comminution '25 we were pleased to hear that the company has developed a new Process and Applications Academy, a training program designed to give graduates technical insights into processing equipment.
The academy aims to impart essential technical knowledge to recent university graduates, ensuring they are prepared for their professional responsibilities. It is designed for graduate process engineers, mechanical engineers, metallurgists and chemical engineers. The inaugural academy also welcomed graduates in electrical and civil engineering, thereby remaining open to all graduates nominated by their respective line managers.
At the inaugural training session, the academy emphasised essential concepts, selection criteria and troubleshooting techniques, with a particular focus on comminution, slurry and dewatering pumps, wear-resistant products, valves and cyclone simulations. Additionally, the course addressed the integration of artificial intelligence into these processes, which is bringing together equipment expertise, metallurgy, and intelligent solutions to optimise entire circuits, not just machines. From real-time digital twins to predictive maintenance and mine-to-mill feedback loops, Weir's vision is helping reshape mining operations and we hope to see the company involved not only in Comminution '27 but also in MEI's inaugural conference, AI in Mineral Processing '27, which follows 2 months later in Cape Town.
Cape Town is the place to be this year if you are a mineral processor. MEI 's two smallest conferences, Physical Separation '26 and...
