Ada Tepe, Bulgaria’s first greenfield mine in over 40 years, has completed open-pit gold production and moved into rehabilitation, using dry-stack tailings and paste backfill to minimise conventional wet tailings storage. The Dundee Precious Metals operation was designed with filtered tailings deposition on a lined facility, progressive reclamation of waste rock dumps, and strict water recycling to limit discharge to local catchments. Its closure approach, including reshaping benches and re-vegetation to blend with the Rhodope Mountains terrain, is being positioned as a reference model for future EU mine waste projects.

Valmet slurry flow specialist Juha Häkkinen sets out how flotation performance hinges on stable level control, correct valve sizing and consistent aeration across conventional cells, columns and flash flotation circuits. He focuses on control-valve behaviour in slurry duties, including cavitation, erosion and hysteresis, and how poor valve selection destabilises froth depth and air–slurry mixing. The piece points to tighter valve control and tailored trim designs as practical levers to improve recovery and reduce reagent overuse in brownfield flotation plants.

Platinum Blasting Services has secured the drill-and-blast contract for Argo Natural Resources’ New Burton Mine in Queensland’s Bowen Basin, extending a relationship established through similar services at the Broadlea Mine over the past two years. The scope will cover production drilling and blasting for open-cut coal operations in one of Australia’s highest-intensity blasting regions, where tight control of vibration, overpressure and fragmentation is critical for nearby infrastructure and dragline/shovel productivity. For mine planners and geotechnical teams, continuity of a single blasting contractor across Broadlea and New Burton should simplify blast design benchmarking, wall control practices and reconciliation of fragmentation performance.