Modern Mining January 2020

working group that is putting it together. An interesting point about Deswik users is that they form a global community who stay in touch with each other, exchanging information on how to get the best out of the company’s software offer- ings. Contributing to this sense of community are the regional user conferences which Deswik regularly organises, with one of the latest being held in Fourways, Johannesburg, in October 2019. Modern Mining attended one of the sessions and was impressed by the strong turnout of around 130 attendees, approximately 90 of them being Deswik customers and the balance Deswik’s own in-house experts. The keynote address was delivered by Mzila Mthenjane, President of the Southern African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (SAIMM). Finally, it is worth mentioning that Deswik main- tains close relationships with academic institutions around the world through ‘Education Partnerships’ which are designed to allow future mining engineers to gain the right software skills to succeed in the mining industry. As part of this partnership, Deswik provides software licences, training material, tutorial videos and on-site workshops. Among the partners are the University of Exeter in the UK, the University of Queensland in Australia, the Colorado School of Mines in the US, the Universidade de Chile in Chile and the University of Mines and Technology (UMaT) in Tarkwa in Ghana. 

Another factor contributing to the success of the company is that its highly experienced found- ers – Ian Lawler, Adam White and Wayne Romer – remain highly involved in management, with Lawler managing the South African office and White and Romer acting as Technical Directors, both based in Brisbane. All three men worked together earlier in their careers in South Africa and were responsible for developing a software suite known as Mine2-4D, which was highly successful. Ultimately their com- pany ACMS was sold to GijimaAst. However, Capstick believes the most important factor contributing to the success of Deswik is the company’s focus on providing fanatical customer support. “Deswik prides itself on creating quality software, delivering a great customer experience, and providing measurable value to its customers,” he says. “Deswik places huge value on building last- ing relationships with its customers and believes it is known for its responsiveness and dedication to solv- ing customers’ problems.” Having been a relatively late entrant to the mining technical software field, Deswik from the start has been a proponent of standard protocols for informa- tion exchange. Says Capstick: “We needed to be able to incorporate data from the legacy systems our customers were using into our own software, so this feature was a priority when we were develop- ing Deswik.Suite. This is still our philosophy and we are an enthusiastic participant in the Open Mining Format (OMF) interoperability project of the Global Mining Guidelines Group.” The Group is a network of organisations and companies which, among other things, is dedicated to creating guidelines that respond to common industry challenges. One of the objectives of the OMF interoperability project is developing an open 3D data exchange format to enable complex files to be shared seamlessly between the various mining solutions in the market. Version One of the OMF was released in 2017 and work on Version Two is currently ongoing, with Deswik’s Adam White and Jayne Kato (the latter being Product Manager – Deswik.CAD) both serving on the international

“Deswik places huge value on building lasting relationships with its customers and believes it is known for its responsiveness and dedication to solving customers’ problems.”

Deswik’s link with milling technology Some readers of Modern Mining might be wondering whether the current Deswik is in any way related to the Deswik that some years ago was market- ing the Deswik mill, developed by the South African father-and-son team of Des and Wikus Erasmus (hence the name ‘Deswik’) and designed for ultra fine grinding. The answer is ‘yes’. ACMS, founded by Ian Lawler and Wayne Romer, backed the technology and as part of its investment formed Deswik Mining Consultants, which is a predecessor of Deswik as it is today. The milling technology was highly successful. It became the subject of a joint venture between Deswik and the Canadian company Knelson, a gravity concentration specialist. Knelson was acquired by FLSmidth in 2011, with the transaction also including the rights to the Deswik mill, which has now been rebranded as the VXP mill. 

January 2020  MODERN MINING  63