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The August AIG South Australia branch meeting will be a talk presented by Lew Barnes who will speak on “Industrial Minerals – A Brief Introduction”
Meet in the restaurant bar (not the public bar) at 6.30pm for complimentary pre-meeting drinks with the talks commencing at 7pm. For those wishing to stay, dinner will be at 8pm as per our normal routine. Parking should not be a problem in the city at this time of the day.
Please let us know by 5pm Sunday 17th August ( Graham Teale or Tom Mayer) whether you will be staying on for dinner (so that we can notify the hotel of approximate numbers).
Why not come along to the talk after your day at the Ninth International Mining Geology conference?
Please note that there will be a SA Branch committee meeting commencing at 6pm on this evening. We need new people to come in and help the committee, so if you think you would be able to help out then please come along. Many people have already indicated that they are prepared to be in the committee so if those people can come along, once again that would be tremendous.
The Talk
Lew`s talk will focus on the relationship between minerals and their use in some of the major industries in our modern day society. The industrial mineral business, particularly in the developed world, is dominated by relatively few, very large, companies. The talk will briefly summarise the role some of these companies play in trading and marketing of industrial minerals with special reference to the Australian scene, and will highlight the role of the industrial minerals geologist in those companies.
The appraisal, development and marketing of a few of the most important industrial minerals will be discussed, highlighting some of the problems associated with development of industrial mineral properties. This discussion will include some comments on preparing meaningful JORC compliant reports.
Lew Barnes
After graduating from Adelaide University in 1968 was employed by the then SA Dept of Mines, initially in the Metallic Minerals section before transferring to the Regional Mapping Group. In 1979 was appointed Senior Geologist, Industrial Minerals and for next 10 years supervised the appraisal of the industrial mineral (and gemstone) resources of South Australia. At this time South Australia was Australia’s major producer of these minerals and the Department provided geological and development advice to many small companies and individuals operating around the state.
In 1989 took up a position as General Manager of Australian Industrial Minerals (AIM) a small company mining, processing and marketing kaolin, talc, mica, sillimanite, kyanite and phosphate. In 1990 AIM was taken over by Commercial Minerals Limited, the industrial minerals arm of Normandy Poseidon Ltd., later Normandy Mining. As Chief Geologist Lew managed exploration for and technical appraisal and development of industrial mineral resources throughout Australia and in Indonesia, Thailand and Turkey. As part of this work Lew was part of the group undertaking due diligence potential take-over targets and has inspected a number of major industrial mineral mining and processing operations in Europe and the USA. Since 2002 Lew has worked as an industrial minerals consultant and in 2008 was engaged by Minotaur Exploration to assist with the technical appraisal and development of the Poochera kaolin deposits.
