2007 Innovation Hero Awards
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Sandy Gray, Technical Director & Elizabeth Lewis-Gray, CEO - Gekko Systems Pty Limited Over the past decade Gekko Systems has combined the skills of engineers, chemists and metallurgists to develop and successfully commercialise a modular range of mineral processing equipment which can be combined to provide gravity separation process solutions for the mining industry. Sandy Gray and Elizabeth Lewis-Gray have combined their technical innovation and entrepreneurial skills to make Gekko Systems the success that it is. Gekko’s first major product was the inline pressure jig, which was a significant innovation in gravity separation technology. Since commercialisation in 1996, over 100 of these units have been manufactured and installed worldwide. The unit is used particularly for continuous heavy mineral recovery, and has been applied in recovery of sulphides, free gold, copper, silver and tin/tantalum. Its competitive advantages include high recovery rates, low water consumption and favourable operating costs. The inline leach reactor was developed to help optimise recoveries from gravity gold concentrates. It thus may be used in tandem with the inline pressure jig, or centrifugal concentrators. The inline spinner is a centrifugal concentrator which also may be applied in tandem with the inline pressure jig to upgrade concentrates, or as a primary concentrator. Another successful product is the inline leach reactor, which is designed to optimise recovery of gold from high grade concentrates. Across the product line Gekko now has some 350 units installed, in 33 countries. Gekko’s typical mode of working is to customise equipment from its base product set to meet the requirements of particular customers, taking responsibility for design, construction and commissioning of the plant. The company is based in Ballarat, and also has offices in South Africa and Canada. Gekko Systems , Sandy Gray, and CEO Elizabeth Lewis-Gray, have already received many awards, including : Deloitte Technology Fast 50 (2002), Australian Venture Capital Award – Best Early Stage category (2003), Manufacturing Hall of Fame (2004), Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year –Southern Region award (2005), and high commendation in the ABB Australia Minerals Processing Plant of the Year category (2006). Further details may be found at : http://www.gekkos.com/ |
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Gary Zamel – Mine Site Technologies Gary Zamel trained as a mining engineer at UNSW, and began his working life in tin mines in Cornwall (UK). He subsequently worked for the Austrian mining and tunnelling equipment supplier Voest Alpine, establishing the business in Australia. In 1985 he established a consultancy business, working on the development of products for the mining industry. Shortly afterwards he became a co-venturer in establishing the Jellinbah East open cut coal mine in the Bowen Basin, subsequently selling his interest to Anglo Coal. In 1989 Gary started Mine Site Technologies as a business specialising in developing and manufacturing mining communications equipment. The original core product, and the foundation for the company’s success, was the Personal Emergency Device (PED) – a system originally designed to provide a fast and reliable method of contacting underground mining personnel in emergency situations. The system has since found general application in underground communications, and has been re-branded as “Productivity Enhancement Device”. The PED is based on the use of ultra low frequency signals which can propagate through hundreds of metres of rock strata from a surface loop antenna laid out above ground across the terrain of the mine site. The original receivers were “personal PED pagers” fitted to underground lamp batteries carried by underground personnel. The receiver displays a short message on an LCD display, and sounds a buzzer as an alert that a message has been received. Personal pagers may be addressed individually or in groups, such details being maintained through Windows based software running on the “PEDCALL” PC component of the overall PED communications system. From its beginnings as a system for communicating with people underground, the product has evolved to encompass other receiving devices, including vehicle mounted receivers, control receivers to enable remote control of underground machinery such as pumps and fans, and “BLASTPED” receivers to enable remote initiation of electric detonators. Another more recently developed technology is a tracker tagging system, based on RFID tags worn by personnel, and beacons installed throughout a mine, to enable the recording of people movements around a mine site. Mine Site Technologies now operates through four offices in Australia (Sydney[HO], Kalgoorlie, Mt Isa and Mackay), two in Canada ( Sudbury, Edmonton), and St Louis in the USA. There are agent distributors in other locations in the USA and Canada, and in China, South Africa, Chile, and Peru. The company’s client list is a Who’s Who of the global mining industry, including Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton, Newcrest, Xtrata, Barrick, Anglo Coal, etc. Some 300 mines are now equipped with Mine Site Technologies’ systems. The company has received two National Energy Awards from the Department of Primary Industries and Energy, ant two Institute of Engineers Awards for Excellence. |
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Julie & Chris Vonwiller (Appen Pty Ltd) Appen Pty Limited was started by Julie Vonwiller in 1996. Chris Vonwiller subsequently joined the business, and they are now joint CEOs of the company. Appen has established a world-wide reputation for its software products, speech databases and services in the field of speech and language technology and science, and computational linguistics applications. The company has successfully leveraged off Australia’s rich multi-lingual resource base and IT skills, and it maintains a strong commitment to research and development. Its competence in linguistic data processing spans some 50 languages, including challenging spoken-only language families such as dialectic Arabic. Exports account for over 95% of Appen’s revenue. The company has a subsidiary in the U.S.A. and operating centres in India, Pakistan and Jordan. Appen’s products can be found in telephone call centres, command and control applications such as are implemented in mobile phones and in-car navigation systems, word-processing systems and in government, homeland security and defence applications. Appen’s product and service offerings include:
The company’s multi-national client list includes Alcatel, IBM, Microsoft, Motorola, Nuance, Siemens, Sony, Telstra and Toshiba, and US Government Defense and Homeland Security Agencies. Examples of Appen’s projects are:
Appen was named Australian ICT exporter of the year for 2005, and has won in the same category at NSW state level in 2005 and 2006. |
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Lyle Bruce and David Noon -- GroundProbe Pty Limited GroundProbe’s main product is its Slope Stability Radar (SSR) which has achieved world-wide success in measuring and monitoring the stability of rock walls in open-cut mines. The SSR has achieved recognition in the global mining industry, having detected a number of significant impending wall failures with sufficient warning to enable evacuation of people and equipment. The company had its genesis during the late 1990s in the work of a research team led by Dr David Noon at Centre for Sensor Signal and Information Processing in the School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering at the University of Queensland, in a project using radar to monitor movement in mine walls. GroundProbe was formed in 2001, and secured the intellectual property rights to the technology. After development of a production prototype of the SSR, the company secured funding assistance from both the Commonwealth and Queensland governments, which enabled in 2003 the initial employment of the inventors from the University of Queensland, with Lyle Bruce being appointed as the CEO. By 2006 the company had grown to about 100 employees. A key asset now is a data base of rock wall failures which constitute signatures of failures that the SSR has measured. GroundProbe SSR systems and support services are now installed at the majority of open-cut mines in Australia. The company has also achieved significant export success, with sales of SSR systems to mines in the USA, Chile, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Indonesia. Through strategic alliances with major mining companies, GroundProbe is involving its customers in the further development of the technology. In support of its Australian and international customers, GroundProbe now has support staff working from offices in Perth, Johannesburg, Tucson and Santiago, in addition to the Brisbane head office. The company is currently working to extend its product range through a ground penetrating radar system that can be applied to map the subsurface of infrastructure facilities such as airport runways, railways, and roads. It is also working to extend the application of the SSR technology in non-mining areas such as building construction sites, potential landslip locations, and avalanche sites. GroundProbe has won numerous awards, including :
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