The MINEXCHANGE 2026 SME Annual Conference & Expo in Salt Lake City will close next week with SME’s Signature Awards Event recognising more than 70 recipients across mining, metallurgy and exploration. Honours span technical excellence, health and safety, environmental stewardship and professional service, reinforcing SME’s role in setting practice benchmarks for US and international operations. For engineers and operators, the awards list often signals emerging leaders, influential research directions and projects likely to shape upcoming guidance and conference content.

Tungsten West has appointed Duo Group as EPC contractor for a new-build crushing, screening and ore sorting plant at the Hemerdon tungsten-tin mine in Devon, and signed an agreement to deploy Gekko Systems’ In Line Pressure Jigs in the flowsheet. The project centres on upgrading run-of-mine ore through pre-concentration and sensor-based sorting ahead of jig-based gravity recovery, aiming to improve tungsten and tin yield from the existing open-pit resource. For process engineers, the move signals a flowsheet shift towards higher early-stage rejection of waste and lower downstream milling load.

Atlas Salt has expanded its strategic relationship with Sandvik Mining as part of an updated feasibility study for the Great Atlantic underground salt project near St George’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, building on a comprehensive non‑binding MOU signed in September 2024. The enlarged scope is expected to cover Sandvik’s input on underground mobile equipment fleets and automation-ready mining systems for large-scale room-and-pillar extraction. For engineers, the move signals early vendor integration into mine design, equipment selection and life-of-mine operating cost assumptions ahead of project sanctioning.