The 2021 Delprat Lecture speaker is Fran Burgess. Fran will reflect on her years in metallurgical operations and share some real insights into how to be effective, efficient and deliver some critical outcomes.

“To do this the overwhelming thing is a belief in people. The people are what make you or break you in any situation. The orebody, the equipment is important, however it is the people that make the difference.”

The lecture series celebrates the life of Guillaume Daniel Delprat, who was an engineer and metallurgist, and a pioneer of the Australian mining industry. He came to Broken Hill in 1898 to become General Manager of BHP. BHP had become very prosperous through mining the rich silver-lead secondary or oxidised ores but could not extract the valuable zinc from the primary ore: the so-called ‘sulphide problem’.

Working with Potter, Delprat had observed in the laboratory that they could make the zinc sulphide in the tailings dumps attach to gas bubbles and float, thereby effecting a separation. A large scale processing plant was quickly built to put this research into practice and the process worked. Delprat had changed processing practice by building one of the first industrial flotation plants and zinc production became a major industry.

The GD Delprat Distinguished Lecture series was initiated in 2010 by Alban Lynch and has welcomed many well respected industry figures as guest lecturers.