Director's Welcome - August 2020

It seems a lifetime ago that I wrote the welcome for the May e-newsletter, at that time we were all working from home and adjusting to the realities of living through a pandemic. Three months later, we are still learning to live with COVID-19, but at UQ we have been able to return to the office under strict physical distancing measures. It has been wonderful to see many of our team back on site and to have meetings face to face rather than through the zoom lens.

The SMI team have not slowed their pace during recent months and we were delighted to learn that Professor Longbin Huang and his team in the Centre for Mined Land Rehabilitation (CMLR) were awarded an Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Project with research partners, Rio Tinto’s Yarwun Refinery and Queensland Alumina Ltd, to investigate the eco-engineering of mine waste to a useful soil.

This is the third government funded research award for SMI this year – in partnership with the University of Western Australia we were awarded a Cooperative Research Centre in March to investigate transitions in mining economies, and the team in the Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining partnered with RESOLVE and Newmont in a successful bid for an ARC Linkage into the role and effectiveness of independent inquiries in mining.

These successes are testament to the hard work of our researchers and the strong collaborations they have developed with industry.

We have also been building our research expertise and were delighted to welcome Dr Baojun Zhao and his High Temperature Processing Research group to JKMRC in July. I see this move as consolidating and advancing our mineral processing research and providing industry with a high impact, cross-disciplinary force in the area.

We also announced recently that JKTech and JKMRC would integrate their activities under one management structure in order to strengthen the consulting and research functions of both organisations and enhance the testing and product delivery to clients.

Many of you will have followed with interest the announcement of the Global Tailings Standard last week and I am very pleased that Professor Deanna Kemp, Director of SMI’s Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining was one of the expert panellists. Additionally a number of the SMI team contributed to the Standard’s accompanying compendium.

Along with Curtin University we have been sponsored by the Minerals Council of Australia to develop a new professional certificate in the Foundations of Modern Mining. The Certificate consists of six courses delivered internationally via the edX platform. The initial pilot of the first course will be available from next week for eight weeks and all courses will be permanently online from February 2021. We are also continuing to offer professional development courses in health and safety, social performance and geology and metallurgy.

It was with great sadness that we learned of the sudden passing of Dan Alexander. Dan as many of you know was part of SMI for many years, first as a PhD student and later working for JKTech in a number of roles before becoming CEO in 2010.  I have known Dan for a long time – we first met in 2006 on an AMIRA P9 project, and we worked closely on a number of projects when I was still with Anglo American. Like many of you, I will greatly miss my discussions with Dan on a wide range of topics from innovative new technologies to the best cricket team in the world. Our thoughts are with his family at this difficult time.

Finally from me, I would encourage you all to complete the 2020 State of Play survey which examines the ways mining and services companies are responding to the external environment and adapting their strategy to remain competitive. SMI is delighted to be a partner in the 2020 survey and we are looking forward to building a picture of the global industry from the data collected.

As ever, you can  stay up to date with our activities via LinkedIn and Twitter where you will find links to SMI stories, webinar and podcasts. If you have any feedback or comments, don’t hesitate to contact me.