Advocates

Alex Bertram

TEXAS, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Alex Bertram is a proud father of two and husband to a chemical engineering wife and successful intrapreneur turned industry advisor & entrepreneur.

Alex is passionate about getting emerging technology into the hands of frontline workers, with a focus on making a tangible difference in sustainability outcomes across the energy and resources industry – particularly carbon emissions and frontline safety.

Since starting his career as a management consultant in Deloitte in 2006, he worked for BHP for 14 years across a diverse range of areas from investment evaluation to construction, prefeasibility studies to equipment autonomation, technology development to portfolio management, from project delivery to product management and a stint at the world largest company Microsoft as secondee Industry Advisor.

Today, Alex focusses his efforts on accelerating development of emerging technologies in Australia through his role as Industry Lead for the Australian Automation & Robotics Precinct. He is also making a tangible difference to the sustainability of the energy and resources industry through his role working with miners on zero emission power systems in heavy industry with FirstMode and is the founder of Carbon30.ai.

A highlight from his 16 year career in energy and resources was developing and scaling BHP's awarded Dash Tools platform, which puts sensors in harms way so people don't have to be on heavy mobile mining equipment (dash.bhp.com).

Chih-Ting Lo

VANCOUVER, CANADA

Chih-Ting is the founder and president at EELO Solutions.

She is a strategist, entrepreneur, and Independent Director committed to making global net-zero carbon future a reality focusing on high-impact industries. A professional engineer with 20 years of experience, her deep sectoral knowledge, expertise in environment, social, and governance (ESG) performance, and leadership in innovation has gained international recognition. Chih-Ting’s data driven approach uniquely compliments exercising governance best practices and overseeing risks. She is collaborative, deliberate, and authentic.

Chih-Ting founded EELO Solutions in 2011 and her team of experts and partners have delivered extensive energy and carbon reductions while increasing capacity in organizations they work with. Her global experience in mining, marine, energy, and international financial institutions has enabled $100M+ private sector investment and raised $45M+ for innovation and decarbonization projects in recent years.

Chih-Ting believes that ESG innovation and investment are necessary to reach climate action targets, and that the mining industry is a critical piece of the puzzle. Chih-Ting is a non-executive Director at Sherritt International, Board Vice Chair at the Metro Vancouver Zero Emissions Innovation Centre, Director at the Centre of Excellence in Mining Innovation (CEMI), and non-executive Director a Minviro. She is an Industry Advisor at UBC Bradshaw Research Initiative for Minerals and Mining and serves on the Advisory Board of clean tech companies such as Summit Nanotech and Invert Inc.

Evert Lessing

HELSINKI, FINLAND

Evert started his metallurgical career in the steel industry in South Africa in 1995. He progressed quickly from engineer, to running a plate heat treatment facility and being responsible for the development of new plate steel alloys. Always enamoured with the beauty of the metal founding field, going from raw materials to a final product, saw him branch out and get deeply involved in both ferrous and aluminium casting. This was also the catalyst for him immigrating to Australia. In 2007 he joined a mineral processing OEM. Here he was responsible for the production of rubber & metal composite mill liners, which started his journey in the mineral processing industry. This culminated in him progressing through numerous roles such as; operations-, engineering -, technical sales -, and R&D management. Through this journey he was introduced to and got actively involved in, SAG & ball milling, HPGR coupled with dry air classification, hydrocyclone classification and centrifugal pump technology. In 2020 he joined Metso as VP for Product Engineering Pumps Business Line, based in Finland, his primary responsibility is managing R&D of the Pump Business Line portfolio of products. In this role he draws on his unique background, holistic & systems view, coupled with a lifelong mission to understand ‘how things work’, to use as basis for improvement. His current active interest and focus is on developing more sustainable slurry pumping and improved hydrocyclone classification and separation technology to reduce energy, material and water usage in the mineral processing industry. A quest he feels passionate about as he deeply cares about conserving this Earth for future generations.   

Greg Lane

BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA

Greg is Chief Technical Officer for Ausenco and non-executive director of NQMinerals PLC, a London-listed resources company. He has more than 30 years’ experience in the field of engineering, design, and operation of minerals processing plants. He is an internationally recognised expert in concentrator design and has prepared and presented numerous papers on comminution circuit and concentrator design during his career. Many of these papers relate to the selection of efficient processes, capital cost effectiveness in design, and roles and relationships in project development. Greg has worked for Aberfoyle, Western Mining Corporation and Minproc, and has taught at the WA School of Mines in Kalgoorlie.

Laurie Reemeyer

VANCOUVER, CANADA

Laurie is the Principal Consultant at Resourceful Paths, a sustainability and strategy consultancy he established in 2016. Resourceful Paths is focused on reducing energy and water use in mining, mitigating climate change and maximising resource recovery.

Laurie has 24 years’ base metals and gold mining operations and consulting experience. As Plant Metallurgist at Mount Isa Mines, he worked with a team of metallurgists to configure the AG/SAG/ball mill circuit to operate efficiently at a range of throughputs through optimising ball charges, cyclone configurations and operating parameters. At Elura and Century mines, he improved operation of fine stirred mill regrind circuits.

He led the Process Engineering team at Amec Foster Wheeler in Vancouver. The team provided design, due diligence and operational support services for crushing and grinding, flotation, dewatering, smelting, hydrometallurgy, paste backfill and water treatment in commodities including copper, gold, nickel, zinc and diamonds. He has also led several studies, including the Oyu Tolgoi feasibility study update and Blackwater PEA.

Laurie is committed to using mineralogy and laboratory ore characterisation data to determine optimal flotation feed and regrind sizes that balance concentrate grades and metal recoveries with energy and media costs. He also assesses opportunities for selective mining and pre-concentration to reduce energy currently expended on grinding uneconomic particles. He has a Bachelor of Engineering (Minerals Process) from University of Queensland and an MBA (Certificate in Business and Engineering Sustainability) from UC Berkeley.

Michael Battersby

CARDIFF, UNITED KINGDOM

Mike Battersby has more than 40 years' experience in the minerals industry. Between 2012 and 2023 Mike was a Director and Past Chair of CEEC. He is proud to continue as an Advocate of the organisation.

In his early career Mike had many years' operational experience with AngloGold, DeBeers and Billiton in Africa and Australia. He then moved into technology development and led the team at KHD Humboldt Wedag AG in Germany that pioneered the use of High Pressure Grinding Rolls, with all its energy savings, in the minerals industry.

In 1997 he founded Maelgwyn Mineral Services Ltd (MMS), based in Cardiff, Wales, where he is currently the Managing Director. MMS provide innovative new technology to the mineral extraction and environmental industries. In 2021 he co-founded Cambrian Environmental Technologies Ltd, a company that is developing novel concepts in mine water and tailings treatment and carbon sequestration.

Mike has degrees in Mineral Processing (Cardiff University) and Enterprise & Innovation (Swinburne University of Technology). He is a Chartered Engineer and is a Fellow of the Australasian Institute of Mining & Metallurgy, a Member of the Institute of Materials, Minerals & Mining (London), and the Society of Mining Engineers of AIME (USA).

Michael Myllynen

ADELAIDE, SOUTH AUSTRALIA

Michael is a senior metallurgist at Magotteaux, Australia.  A minerals processing engineer from the University of South Australia, Michael started his career working at the renowned Broken Hill as a graduate-come-plant metallurgist where his love of flotation started.  Since joining Magotteaux in 2008, Michael has specialised in the effect of grinding media on downstream processing (flotation and leaching) as well as developed a keen interest in improving grinding efficiency through better ball size selection, liner design, cyclone operation and circuit configuration. 

During his time with Magotteaux, Michael has supported the mining industries in Australia, South America and North America working with clients to deliver technical studies to help to optimise their grinding, flotation and leaching performance.  This has exposed Michael to many different comminution circuit designs, philosophies, and practices and strengthened his appreciation for efficient comminution practices. 

Peter Amelunxen

CANADA

Peter Amelunxen is Vice President of Technical Services at Capstone Copper Inc, in Canada, overseeing technical and operational processes and managing project review, due diligence, project and operations risk management. He has worked for 20 years in diverse roles including consulting, grinding and flotation circuit modelling, plant operations, engineering and laboratory testing.

Peter has operated a consulting business in Santiago, Chile and Lima, Peru, and served as Director of Metallurgy for the Aminpro Chile, the metallurgical testing arm of the business. He is an expert in the geometallurgy and the geostatistical handling of point hardness data, and participated in SAG Power Index (SPI) test and CEET comminution model development, and testing and calibration procedures for inferring ball mill and crusher indices from drill core. He spent almost five years in plant operations with Phelps Dodge Mining Company, including mill superintendent of Cerro Verde HPGR-based concentrator in southern Peru. Peter completed his Bachelor’s Degree in Mining Engineering at the University of Arizona and his Master’s Degree in Mineral Processing at McGill University. He has authored many papers on the testing, modelling and design of mineral processing systems and received several awards and a patent for his contributions to mineral processing.

Peter Radziszewski

VANCOUVER, CANADA

A graduate of UBC (BASc) and Université Laval (MSc, PhD) in mechanical engineering, Peter has worked in a research and development capacity in academia (UQAT, McGill) and industry (Metso, Comminution Reimagined) that includes sabbatical stays at the JKMRC and the Canadian Space Agency. His research efforts have contributed to the development of DEM methods to simulate tumbling mill charge dynamics, steel media wear prediction methodologies as well as a few patent applications related to wear measurement, charge motion measurement, microwave assisted drilling, stirred mill technologies and acid tailings treatment. His teaching activities in engineering design have led to the development of an electric snowmobile, a hybrid race car, contributions to powertrain modelling and simulation as well as the development of a prototype wheel for lunar mobility inspired by tumbling mill charge motion. Peter has authored or co-authored over 200 technical communications covering innovation, IoT, sensor development, wear stirred milling, mechanical design, microwave assisted breakage, energy recovery, mobility, wood products, space mining and pedagogy. Currently, Peter is VP Research and Innovation with Rampart Detection System Ltd of Langley BC, Canada looking at expanding the use and application of electric field and magnetic field sensors IP portfolio mainly in the mining industry.

Robert McIvor

MINNESOTA, USA

Rob is founder and Chief Metallurgist – Grinding Systems, Metcom Technologies, Inc., based Marquette, MI, USA. He has devoted his career to the design and optimization of grinding circuits. He earned a B.Sc. in Mining Engineering from the University of Saskatchewan and a Masters in Mineral Economics from McGill University before going to work for Allis-Chalmers. There he worked in slurry pump and grinding mill application engineering, the latter as understudy of F.C. Bond and C.A. Rowland, Jr. He moved to Dominion Engineering to head mill application design, and then to Linatex Canada to manage pump and cyclone equipment process design.

Having discovered “The Functional Performance Equation for Closed Circuit Grinding”, he returned to McGill to earn his Ph.D. in Metallurgical Engineering by developing methodology for industrial plant grinding process improvement. Moving into private practice, he developed a comprehensive system and training program for plant grinding process management. He then worked for Cleveland-Cliffs in grinding process improvement and managed research and development before founding Metcom Technologies, Inc., in 2003.

Through Metcom, Rob has been providing consulting and delivering training to scores of companies worldwide. In 2010 the Canadian Mineral Processors awarded him the “Art MacPherson Medal for Significant Contributions to Comminution Technology”.

Sarah Boucaut

ADELAIDE, AUSTRALIA

Sarah is a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and currently serves a Non-Executive Director of two organisations, as well as serving as a member of an audit, finance and risk sub-committee. Sarah has been accountable for developing and implementing strategies and business operating plans to improve performance in global corporations and SMEs. With a diverse background spanning the not-for-profit, corporate, and Federal Government sectors, Sarah has experience in policy application, collaboration, and stakeholder engagement. More recently Sarah has accepted professional roles mentoring emerging and mid-career executives. Sarah was the founding CEO of CEEC International, which grew to become a global organisation under her leadership. She has a Graduate Diploma of Management (Mktg).

Tom Payten

ADELAIDE, AUSTRALIA

Dr. Tom Payten has been involved in R&D projects between Industry and University in Australia for over 15 years. In his current role as Managing Director of the Nova Terra Institute, Tom has driven the creation of research and innovation projects at different horizons and TRL. He has driven the growth of the Nova Terra network; identifying links and building collaboration between universities, private and public industry, and government bodies.

Current Nova Terra focus areas under his leadership include copper, mine waste, and water. The Nova Terra programs aim to address water management issues for communities in tropical and arid environments to improve mineral processing outcomes, reduce water impacts, improve environmental remediation, and recover critical metals from waste streams.

Tom has over a decade of experience in process mineralogy and geometallurgy, conducting characterisation and processing assessment across all stages of the mining cycle both in industry and university. His PhD thesis is titled “Real time sensors for critical minerals” and demonstrated novel techniques for detection and quantification of lithium, rare earth, and titanium minerals.

He holds an honorary research associate position with the La Trobe University School of Physics in recognition of his efforts to assist them with machine learning and other research opportunities, and an adjunct position with Curtin University in recognition of the relevance of his experience for ongoing higher degree research students.