With its extensive array of products, skills, expertise, and knowledge, Multotec will be participating in the 11th World Conference on Sampling and Blending, taking place from the 21 to 23 May 2024, in South Africa. The event will offer valuable insights for academics, manufacturers, engineering firms and practitioners striving to achieve representative sampling across diverse industries.

Says Willem Slabbert, Product Specialist: Samplers and Magnetics at Multotec, “Key contributing authors from Multotec will be presenting four technical papers at the conference and the company will be one of the premium sponsors at the event. Delegates can expect to gain practical application and industry knowledge around global best practices, standards compliance and Theory of Sampling (TOS) compliant sampling at the event.

“Not only will we be participating in the conference, but we are also part of the organising committee and technical review panel,” says Slabbert.

Multotec will primarily focus on sampling application knowledge and sampling compliance improvement from our in-depth understanding of industry and commodities, but we will also present sampler product innovation such as our evolving Rotating Plate Divider. Through collaborative efforts with Multotec’s customers, this device has undergone refinement. 

“We believe that the amalgamation of these refinements aligned to TOS recommendations, combined with our proven mechanical design, has resulted in a product that is ready for the demands of even the most challenging sampling applications,” says Slabbert.

“In addition, we will be presenting a second paper that delves into the understanding of practical mechanical equipment design and its role in sampling systems compliance downstream and not merely a unit operation working in isolation of the sampling system it is serving. Our paper explains how three-times nominal particle top size cutter openings often collect sample increments that are too small for sufficient sub-division in downstream sampling operations. Our recommendation to improve one of the TOS recommendations comes from our experience on clients’ insufficiently performing sampling systems and rectifying such operations whether we were the designer or not.”

Cross-commodity experience

Additional papers share a common thread which is based on Multotec’s cross-commodity experience. This experience allows the company to model and simulate their capital expenditure (capex) and operating expenditure (opex) of sampling systems for different lot sizes, sampling durations, and precision requirements. The case study explains which solutions are techno-commercially best suited for each client's specific needs.

“We will also be discussing the use of alternative mineral commodity standards that are modern and comprehensive to supplement incomplete or dated standards so that global-based sampling practices can be achieved across commodities,” says Slabbert.

“Our team of sampling experts not only designs mechanical equipment samplers to prevent random errors, but also investigates non-random, constitutional and distributional heterogeneity to determine the required frequency and amount of composite sample required at different particle size, for targeted representative mineral reporting and stock/resource/reserve/performance declaration.” 

Multotec, which is both an Original Equipment Manufacturer and Sampling Knowledgeable Partner working towards compliance and assurance, understands the science presented by the Theory of Sampling and make it practical for our customers and industry. 

“This ensures that the sampling regimes that include our sampler equipment are accurate and precise and therefore representative. We can also utilise our advanced chronostatistical variogram tools and highly qualified personnel to work towards eliminating sampling errors (on systems supplied by us or not), until the system complies to global best practices and client reporting confidence requirements,” says Slabbert.

Product development and training

Multotec’s customised solutions draw on extensive experience and once all this knowledge is packaged into a product, it is released to the industry, along with training aimed at end users, engineering houses, universities, and other players in the sampling fraternity.

“We also publish technical articles and contribute to certifying standard bodies such as the South African Bureau of Standards and ISO committees. We also conduct peer reviews of others’ work,” says Slabbert.

Over and above the formal proceedings at the conference, members of the International Pierre Gy Sampling Association (IPGSA) will present and host a range of pre-conference training sessions. Delegates will also have the opportunity to participate in post-conference technical site visits to Multotec’s sampling equipment manufacturing facility and various other local mining industry experiences.