Renewed tech centre banks on experience

JH: For the new facility, we started with a clean slate. We worked very closely with an engineering firm which specialises in process mapping, who we engaged, along with Amdel staff, in all stages of the design of the facility, in order to base a layout on process flow and process efficiencies. The facility itself was actually a result of Amdel’s ability to be flexible, to work with our clients to meet their own internal project deadlines. In this particular instance, we recognised that the client’s timetable required a 24/7 operation, and this necessitated us building a new facility in a new suburb. The facility originally was focused solely on mineral processing activities, that included crushing, screening, the full suite of comminution testing, flotation, leaching and rheology. However, it is now growing and evolving, into a more generic minerals facility ultimately including heavy liquid separations, mineralogy, x-ray diffraction (XRD), asbestos identification, and geoanalytical services (assaying). Plans are underway and designs in place to ultimately open a dedicated uranium processing and hazardous materials facility adjacent to the existing site in Wingfield.

AM: South Australia has huge uranium resources, and what can Amdel offer in terms of support and expertise to the uranium industry?

JH: Amdel has over 40 years of experience in the uranium industry. We have worked with all of the majors, and many junior players, both here in South Australia, nationally, and also offshore, and this has been since the last major Uranium boom in the 1970s. We supply mineral processing and/or geoanalytical services to the existing three uranium mines in Australia. There are many new players coming into the South Australian uranium exploration industry, and many of them are using new exploration techniques. The South Australian government has introduced a number of incentives for exploration such as the PACE initiative, and the government is very pro-mining and supportive in general. South Australia’s a very dynamic environment to be part of at the moment, and Amdel is very keen to use our distinguished South Australian history and technical credentials to work with customer in all aspects of the mining and exploration industry. Part of our strategy is the opening of this dedicated uranium processing facility in Adelaide in the months ahead, and this will allow us to pull together all of that experience and history into the one facility and provide a premium service to clients.

AM: So what can Amdel offer clients that the mining company’s own in-house testing services don’t provide?

JH: Amdel has the experience and the science, we are flexible and customer-focused. We are able to operate with a sense of urgency and meet turnaround requirements that many of the in-house facilities can’t always meet, for any manner of reasons. We have all the quality accreditations and operational systems already in place, and we have the access to the personnel to do this as well. We’re also experienced in establishing fit-for-purposed tailor made on-site lab facilities, and we’re not afraid to go into the regional and remote areas to do this – we have a very successful track record to support the on-site labs.

AM: A unique part of Amdel’s geo-analytical business is the x-ray diffraction (XRD), and asbestos identification capability. Can you reveal more about this service?

JH: It is unusual for a lab that provides assays to the mining industry to also have an XRD facility, and vice-versa. Many mines would have XRD related to mineral processing, but they would not be public testing facilities. Generally speaking, for a geoanalytical lab to offer an XRD service, it would be too low a volume to be worthwhile. However, Amdel set up an R&D XRD facility as part of its original “one-stop shop” philosophy, and as part of that, we also had the first electron probe in Australia. At this time, there was considerable work for mineral identification, in the uranium industry in particular, where now electron probes, or scanning electron microscopes might be used. Then, when Amdel branched into materials, XRD was used for corrosion identification, and materials ID, then the petroleum group came into existence, and XRD became useful in identification of interstitial clays in sandstones. Then asbestos identification was required – that started for us in 1985, and our first major client there was Telecom. They required all the samples to be analysed by XRD. Currently with the asbestos identification, we do use a microscope, but for an important subset, which is the floor tile industry, the microscopy alone is an inconclusive method. You actually need to use XRD in conjunction, so that has now become the method of choice with all of our clients and for NATA certification.