Courtney Dobson

• Supervision of a 16 person metallurgical department providing technical input to Cadia’s 30+ Mtpa Copper and Gold concentrator and Moly Plant.
• Ownership of a $5M annual Metallurgy budget and $55M grinding media and reagent budget.
• Involvement in production forecasting, budgeting, metal accounting, plant metallurgical performance and Full Potential growth pipeline.
• Responsible for the process owner’s team of a brownfield coarse tailings sand system, providing technical input into design and completing business preparation activities.

• Supervision and development of 2 - 4 direct reports.
• Responsible for the metallurgical function of the Cadia Molybdenum Plant. This includes daily production troubleshooting and optimisation, project execution to support continuous improvement, metal accounting, reagent budgeting and tracking, test work design and supervision, routine reporting and compliance.
• Involvement in upholding strict process safety requirements through routine process safety and in field verifications.
• Small scale commissioning of carbon dioxide dosing system.

Achievements

• Delivery of Full Potential project portfolio resulting in achievement of Molybdenum Feasibility Study recovery (+10% monthly improvement from previous best performance).
• Optimisation of the NaHS oxidation shutdown strategy, reducing oxidation time from 72 hours to 3 hours whilst preventing toxic gas formation.

• Supervision of 3 direct reports and mentoring of plant metallurgists.
• Responsible for driving the progression of the Ore Treatment projects pipeline, encompassing projects to improve milling, flotation and CIL performance whilst striving for cost reductions.
• Process Safety Champion for Processing, including oversight of Cyanide Code compliance.
• Assist in the execution of shutdowns by assuming a shutdown coordinator role to act as an interface between the Operations and Maintenance teams.
• Provide coverage for the Ore Processing Superintendent role as required.

Achievements

• Full design and conversion of a 36” SAG mill from radial pulp discharge liner to a curved discharge design, improving mill specific energy by 6%.

• Management of the Concentrator 1 Grinding circuit with exposure to secondary crushers, screening, HPGR, SAG mill and 3 parallel ball milling trains.
• Engagement with operational, engineering and maintenance teams to provide strategic technical guidance.
• Deliver continuous improvement projects to drive production and reduce costs.
• Responsible for the planning and optimisation of Concentrator 1 mill relines.
• Supervision of a first year Metallurgy graduate and vacation students. Providing technical support and detailed development plans.

Achievements

• Led Concentrator 1 Grinding through 5-months in SAG Bypass operation and the subsequent commissioning of the upgraded SAG mill motor.
• Commissioning and optimization of a brownfield secondary crushing circuit, including an overhaul of the process control philosophy.
• Rapid delivery of 10+ initiatives over a 3-month period to help stabilize SAG mill performance in response to SAG surge events.

• Acting in the role of Cadia Concentrator 1 Flotation metallurgist, accountable for the performance of 2 sulphide flotation circuits with conventional flotation cells, regrind circuits, Jameson cells and an Eriez Hydrofloat circuit.
• Extensive training of operations to improve flotation performance.
• Planning and execution of two detailed benchmarking flotation surveys.

Achievements

• Debottlenecking of sulphide flotation cleaning circuit providing $40M AUD uplift.
• Successful and safe completion of test work, plant trial and capital project delivery to transition a flotation circuit to using PAX as sole collector.
• Executed a suite of initiatives over a 12-month period to improve the metallurgical operation and maintenance of the Coarse Ore Flotation (Eriez Hydrofloat) circuit.