The Parker Centre has further strengthened its relationship with Barrick Gold, one of the Centre's 18 Industry Participants, through two jointly run custom workshops for Barrick's Australia Pacific Metallurgy Group.

Group Metallurgist Mr Tom Gibbons says Barrick's Australia Pacific region has a cross-section of the gold industry, ranging from relatively small, simple circuits to large and complex plants processing refractory ore.

The workshops were designed to improve this region's processing capabilities. The first workshop brought Barrick metallurgical managers together to build relationships and understanding, and to explore ways to share collective knowledge to tackle common issues and themes, with the ultimate goal of improving gold recovery.

In addition, Parker Centre and Metso Minerals experts illustrated the potential for improvements in recovery using real-life examples from already completed research projects.

The second workshop, the “Back to Basics” workshop on the fundamentals of gold recovery and processing, was run to build the skills and knowledge of plant metallurgists and supervisors from across the Australia Pacific region.

"We worked with the Parker Centre to tailor the workshop to our specific needs,” says Mr Gibbons. “In addition to providing training on gold metallurgy, we wanted them to go back to site with project templates and tools for circuit optimisation.”

Barrick plans to follow up these successful workshops with additional courses later this year, and metallurgists from a number of mine sites have already initiated further contact with the Parker Centre staff on specific projects.

*adapted from an article by Andy Lloyd in Barrick News (Barrick Gold's internal newsletter), Issue 1 - 2009