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.

ESCO’s ESCO division has launched the Nexsys Ripper System for Cat D11 dozers, targeting high-load ripping in mining, aggregate and heavy construction applications. The system uses premium alloy steels and a redesigned shank–tooth interface to improve penetration and wear life under highly abrasive conditions typical of large open pits and quarries. Faster tooth changes and reduced unplanned change-outs are aimed at increasing dozer utilisation on primary ripping benches and hard overburden, with direct implications for drill-and-blast requirements and fleet productivity.