Modern Mining October 2021

cutting-edge reagent solutions

clients can report increased performance to their shareholders,” says Stubbs. Customer-centric approach In the early days, the company was focused on bringing the product closer to the market as part of its customer-centric sales model – carrying the cost on its balance sheet rather than on that of the cli- ent. This, says Stubbs, was to alleviate the extremely long lead times that were associated with products that were supplied from Europe, North America and China, among others, and to offer a service that was more supply chain-driven to Axis House clients. “While that service approach still remains, we have in the past 15 years adapted it. We now work closer with clients to provide tailor-made solutions that speak directly to each client’s unique needs. We have evolved to become a client-specific reagent solutions provider. This is due to our understanding that client needs are often different from site to site. Once you have a large pool of clients however, you get to experience most of the issues or main prob- lems on site and therefore we are able to leverage the knowledge that we have acquired across these various sites to develop solutions for customers. Knowledge sharing becomes vital, as it enables us to find solutions for the client quickly,” says Stubbs.

says Stubbs. “We believe in using science to create workable solutions for our customers, which is why R&D underpins everything that we do. We oper- ate a fully equipped flotation laboratory in Cape Town, South Africa and a metallurgical laboratory in Australia. Both these laboratories offer a fully complementary service to existing and prospective clients.” Reliable data is produced from the lab, before development products are distributed to site, where their potential is demonstrated in the client’s labora- tory before pilot or full-scale plant trials. “We have infield metallurgists that travel around to sites with mobile testing devices for flocculation and sedimen- tation, among others. We also have a small pilot plant for precipitation tests. This allows our metallurgists to carry out all the test work independent of the cli- ent’s team onsite, before proceeding to confirmatory work,” says Gareth Heynes, sales manager: Africa. “Clients require full confidence before proceed- ing with additional or alternative reagents into their plants. So as a reagents supplier you want to be sure that you provide a product that gives the client the highest level of assurance in the performance of their plant. At the end of the day, everyone reports to someone, and metal recoveries are reported to shareholders, and we strive to ensure that all our

The Atomic Absorption Spectrometry or AAS is a technique that measures the concentrations of metallic elements in solution.

October 2021  MODERN MINING  11