Building Execution Confidence with Demonstration Scale Common User Facilities

Critical minerals projects face increasing pressure to demonstrate technical viability, operational reliability and execution readiness before securing investment and offtake agreements. Join Sedgman experts Brenden O'Shea and Michael Hart as they explore the role of demonstration-scale common user facilities in building confidence with financiers, investors and downstream customers.  

About this event

Successful critical minerals projects rely on more than positive laboratory results. As projects progress towards execution, investors and offtakers increasingly seek evidence that integrated flowsheets can operate reliably under continuous conditions and consistently deliver products to specification.

In this webinar, Brenden O'Shea and Michael Hart from Sedgman will examine why demonstration plants have become essential decision-making infrastructure for critical minerals developments. The session will explore how common user processing facilities support project confidence, reduce scale-up uncertainty and help validate process performance before full-scale implementation.

Attendees will gain practical insights into designing effective demonstration programs, identifying operational risks, generating representative product samples and producing robust scale-up data that supports financing and project development decisions.

Speaker/s

Brenden O'Shea

Process Team Lead
Sedgman

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Brenden O’Shea is a Process Team Lead at Sedgman within the Sedgman Prudentia team, with over 20 years’ experience in hydrometallurgical process development, studies, projects and operations. The critical minerals he's been involved in refining include lithium, nickel, cobalt, copper, high-purity alumina, rare earths, and battery recycling. Brenden has led the design of pilot and demonstration plants and has extensive experience developing and executing integrated pilot-scale test programs, validating flowsheets under continuous operating conditions, and translating test work outcomes into financing-ready process designs. He holds a Bachelor of Chemical Engineering from The University of Queensland and is a Chartered Professional Engineer (CPEng) and RPEQ.

Michael Hart

Lead Process Engineer
Sedgman

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Michael Hart is a Lead Process Engineer at Sedgman, with more than nine years’ experience across vanadium, gold, aluminium and coal processing. He has broad experience in technical process control, plant commissioning and continuous improvement, with project experience spanning process design, commissioning, design reviews, HAZOP actions, performance testing and operational improvement. Michael has acted as lead process engineer for the Blackwater Gold Project, and as lead commissioning process engineer for multiple processing plants. He holds an Integrated Bachelor/Master of Engineering in Chemical Engineering from The University of Queensland.