Alcore Permanent CEO Appointment
Sydney, Jan 13, 2021 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Australian Bauxite Limited (
ASX:ABX) (A7B:FRA) is pleased to advise that Dr Mark Cooksey has permanently joined ABx's technology subsidiary ALCORE Limited (Alcore).
Dr Cooksey was first appointed General Manager of Alcore (ASX 24 January 2020) and then CEO (ASX 24 August 2020), on a leave arrangement from Australia's national science agency, CSIRO. This appointment is now permanent, and he will lead Alcore's development and commercialisation of a new process for aluminium fluoride (AlF3) production.
Dr Cooksey brings to Alcore an impressive history in research, development and commercialisation of new processes in the minerals and metals industry. He commenced his career as a Research Engineer in aluminium smelting with Comalco (now Rio Tinto Alcan) in 1997 and became a Senior Research Engineer in 2000. Mark joined CSIRO in 2004 as a Senior Research Engineer and become a Senior Principal Research Leader in 2016.
Dr Cooksey holds a PhD (Chemical & Materials Engineering), Bachelor of Engineering (Materials - First Class Honours) and Bachelor of Science (Information Technology and Applied Mathematics). He has worked closely with aluminium and other metal industries, and his significant experience in commercialising new technologies and processes will enable Alcore to transition into the next phase of development.
Welcoming Dr Cooksey, Ian Levy, ABx's CEO, commented: "In the last 12 months Mark has been instrumental in accelerating Alcore's technical and commercial development, and we deeply appreciate CSIRO for facilitating this arrangement. Alcore is now beginning to scale-up the technology to larger scale production and needs the highly skilled and experienced leadership that Mark can provide. This is an important step in the delivery of value from the Alcore initiative to all shareholders."
RESULTS KEEP IMPROVING
Under Mark's guidance over recent months, Alcore has demonstrated:
- Repeated recovery of fluorine from aluminium smelter waste provided by multiple suppliers
- Consistent production of AlF3 with composition meeting commercial chemical and physical specifications (see Table 1). The chemical analysis was performed by CSIRO
- Prevention of key impurities in bauxite from reacting with fluorine acids, allowing the impurities to remain as solids that can be separated from the AlF3 solution during processing
Current Alcore activities
1. Conducting engineering validation, which is likely to include a pilot plant for critical process steps, to:
- Confirm process and product performance at a larger scale
- Produce larger samples for evaluation by aluminium smelters
2. Conducting process verification experiments in the laboratory to:
- Produce AlF3 from bauxite and aluminium smelter waste of equivalent quality to that produced from aluminium hydroxide
- Optimise the recovery of fluorine from aluminium smelter waste, including the separation and recovery of by-products with potential commercial value
Government & Industry
Discussions continue with governments, agencies, engineering experts and major companies in the aluminium industry. Alcore considers AlF3 to be a strategically important mineral product.
To view tables and figures, please visit:
https://abnnewswire.net/lnk/E174IZ31
About Australian Bauxite Ltd
Australian Bauxite Limited (ABx) (ASX:ABX) has its first bauxite mine in Tasmania & controls the Eastern Australian Bauxite Province. ABx's 11 bauxite tenements in Queensland, New South Wales & Tasmania totalling 662 km2 are all 100% owned, unencumbered & free of third-party royalties. ABx's bauxite is gibbsite trihydrate (THA) bauxite that can be processed into alumina at low temperature.
ABx has committed a large proportion of its expenditure into Research and Development to find ways to capitalise on the main strengths of its bauxite type which is very clean, free of all deleterious elements and partitioned into layers, nodules, particles and grains of different qualities that can be separated into different product streams using physical, chemical and geophysical methods.
ABx has declared large Mineral Resources in northern NSW, southern NSW, Binjour in central QLD & in northern Tasmania.
ABx's first mine commenced at Bald Hill near Campbell Town, Tasmania in December 2014 - the first new Australian bauxite mine for more than 35 years.
ABx aspires to identify large bauxite resources in the Eastern Australian Bauxite Province and has created significant bauxite development projects in 3 states, Queensland, New South Wales and Tasmania. Its bauxite deposits are favourably located for direct shipping of bauxite to both local and export customers.
ABx endorses best practices on agricultural land, strives to leave land and environment better than we find it. We only operate where welcomed.
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