▲

946 DECEMBER 2013 VOLUME 113 The Journal of The Southern African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy

Following the very successfulWorld Gold Conferences – heldbi-annually since 2005 in

Calgary, Cairns, Johannesburg andMontreal—the fifth World Goldconference, jointly organised by TheAusIMM, the Canadian Institute ofMining and the Southern AfricanInstitute of Mining and Metallurgy(SAIMM), was held in Brisbane,Queensland on 26-29 September2013.

Themed ʻChallenges in GoldMiningʼ, the conference was stagedover a weekend with parallelsessions, followed by some fourworkshops. The conference waswell attended with almost 300delegates attending this yearʼsevent with 30 per cent of thedelegates representing 19countries, a tribute to the theme andexcellent list of plenary and keynotespeakers.

Feedback received from thedelegates was that the plenary andkeynote speakers at this conferencewere some of the best they hadheard in a long time, including:

• Eduard Eshuys, Executive Chair,Drummond Gold

• Jannie van Deventer, CEO,Zeobond and Professor atUniversity of Melbourne

• Greg Corbett, Corbett GeologicalServices

• Andrew Tonkin, MonsahUniversity

• Mark Clark, Managing Director,Regis Resources

• Mark Morcombe, Senior VicePresident, AngloGold Ashanti

• Mark Bristow, CEO, RandgoldResources.

Twice as many papers werereceived as could beaccommodated so the selection ofpapers was done to reflect thetheme and related topics as well asensuring quality papers werepresented at the conference. The

papers covered a wide range oftopics and disciplines and coveredall issues from existing miningoperations to new technologies andinnovations and processes. Theprogram was run in parallelsessions which worked very welldue to the excellent work of thevarious chairpersons of thesessions.

There were several pre- andpost-conference workshopscovering all aspects of gold mining.These were well attended and somewere held in collaboration with theGeometallurgy 2013 conferencethat followed.

World Gold 2013 was very wellsupported with 24 exhibitorsparticipating in the trade exhibitionand major sponsors including GoldFields, AngloGold Ashanti, ALSMetallurgy, Snowden, Outotec andMintrex. The conference dinner,sponsored by Mintrex, was wellattended and the dinner speakerAllan Trench, Professor at theUniversities of Western Australiaand Curtin, gave an excellent talkon ʻthings they donʼt teach you atmining school about the gold

businessʼ and Fiona Morgan, actingCEO of Mintrex, gave apresentation about the work doneby dinner sponsor Mintrex.

We had an outstanding programfor World Gold 2013, a conferenceseries that has contributed greatly tothe knowledge in the gold industryas well as the understanding ofissues and challenges facing theindustry. The organising committeewould like to thank all plenary andkeynote speakers as well as allauthors for their valuablecontributions in making this such asuccessful conference. Our specialthanks goes to the staff in theEvents and Publications teams ofThe AusIMM.

And finally, a special word ofthanks to a very competentorganising committee—as well asall the peer reviewers from all overthe world—who helped to ensurethat the quality of these proceedingswere of a very high standard.

The next conference to beorganised by the SAIMM, will beheld in Gauteng, South Africa inSeptember 2015.

World Gold 2013by Dr Leon Lorenzen FAusIMM, Conference Chair

Mike Nelson, Guy Deschênes, Nel Phillips, Simon Dominy, Geoff Sharrock, Leon Lorenzen(Conference Chair), Jacques Eksteen and Gavin Lind