keynote speakers

The Keynote Lecture, "The slow journey to practical energy efficient comminution" was given by Chris Rule, Independent Metallurgical Consultant, Seymet Pty Ltd, South Africa.

Chris Rule is a Director of MEI's Industry Advocate, CEEC. He graduated from RSM, Imperial College London in 1979 with MSc and DIC in Extractive Metallurgy and BSc (Hons), in Mineral Processing at University College Cardiff. 

He has been involved in minerals processing, primarily in the PGM industry since 1980. Roles include Impala Platinum, Genmin, BHP and Anglo American, including senior operating management positions in South Africa and Zimbabwe; interspersed with periods in development, process design and project execution for concentrating, smelting, base and precious metal refining for plant installations. He formerly led Concentrator Technology at Anglo American Platinum, responsible for technical operational support, process plant design and optimization and technology development.

Chris has been heavily involved in initiating and leading a number of fine grinding projects using stirred milling in both mainstream regrind and flotation concentrate regrind applications; mostly IsaMill technology. His areas of interest include sensor sorting of ROM ore; development work with HPGR circuits; multistage energy efficient ore processing circuits and mineralogical routine analyses on plant samples.

The keynote lecture, "Progress towards the Virtual Comminution Machine" was given by Dr. Paul Cleary, CSIRO, Australia.

The keynote lecture "Keys to Best Practice Comminution" was given by John Starkey, of Starkey & Associates, Inc, Canada.

John has worked for 15 years in operating mineral processing plants, 15 years in engineering companies designing concentrators, and 30 years as a Consulting Engineer.

He invented the SPI, and SAGDesign tests, and the lab mills required to do these tests.