This is going to be a philosophical article, no data at all, and I make no apologies for it. In fact, my wish is this GOIA will leave you a little unsteady.

Andre is no longer with us and I miss him already. No, I didn’t hang around with him, never went to his home, but I shared some of the world he so ably began to shape. Began, because there is still a long way to go, always will be. But where to is what this article is about, and with what in mind?  

Knowledge is that accumulated, imagination is its conception, and innovation is where a dose of practicality comes along to give it some tangible form. We all seem pretty good at the knowledge bit, imagination and innovation seem to be the preserve of the precious few, too few. How beneficial it would be to open that up a bit.

In our field the tangible form are devices, the green spinney things that separate gold from slurry, minerals from gangue, stuff from stuff. Huge scope for innovation within that lovely machine frame and you may have noticed some technological leaps recently, mainly to do with the cone technology, FLEX*Flo and the like. The massive XD70, like the space shuttle, demanded all sorts of technological advances just to come into existence. Most of these features are now trickling down into the rest of the Knelson range, a good thing, but how much of that would have happened if it were not for that oversized incentive? Rest assured there are even more exciting things on the way, the backroom team have been making a mess, always a good sign.

But no, its not the machine advances I am talking about, that’s our problem. The broad horizon that we all need to challenge next is application, that interesting place where the innovation meets the dirt and puts extra ounces into the bar. I say we because it is your domain, you operate there and you are the people who understand it far better than we do. And to get something really exciting happening we need to break down this silly vendor-client relationship and move closer to a technology partnership. Andre was doing something very similar to this, but from the safe haven of the middle ground. Plant trials, gathering data and studies from you the client on the one hand, and then challenging the supplier community on the other hand to come up with the solutions to achieve a particular goal. The recovery of gold from flotation concentrates is just one example, and we at Knelson expended many sharpeners honing our skills in this department.

I have no doubt that the middle ground has many more able players coming along to take up the reins, but the world is spinning ever faster and we don’t have the luxury of time. So here is what I am proposing – we move closer together to bridge the gap and carry on in the meantime. A nice concept, good warm thoughts, but just how is this going to happen? The world of mineral processing is a very diverse place, from gold recovery to coal cleaning and everything in between, but luckily for us all of it breaks up into disciplines – flotation, heap leaching, etc. You may have noticed our new ‘Revolutionary Thinking’ initiative, nothing more nor less than an attempt to compartmentalize the industry into interest areas where we can hopefully interact more effectively. We have some ideas where gravity may be useful in each, and you may read about some of these on the web site, but far, far more important is what ideas do you, the experts have?

So here is my challenge to you fellow processors: produce by all means, balance the metallurgical account if you must,  but for goodness sake, start imagining! Status quo is yesterday, get imbalanced, get inspired, get innovative and push some boundaries around. We at Knelson Gravity Solutions will be only too happy to hear from you, share your ‘Revolutionary Thinking’ ideas and help it all to fruition.

To the future, may it be everything you and Andre imagined.