Karen McCaffery has more than 35 years’ experience in the mining and minerals industry. Since graduating as a Bachelor of Chemical Engineering, she has worked directly for several major mining houses in a range of operational leadership, technical support, project development, business & strategic planning and business excellence roles within the metallurgical function and more recently, by consulting to industry.

Areas of specific expertise include metal accounting, having developed and deployed a comprehensive metal accounting standard and guideline based on the AMIRA Metal Accounting Code of Practice for a mining major, developing and embedding sound applied geo-metallurgical practices into day-to-day operations and production business planning and, process operational performance improvement across the complete plant flowsheet.

With over 25 years expatriate experience, a large part of her work has also been to develop others including metallurgists, engineers, operators and technicians to build their skills and capability. This includes building and managing a successful new graduate training scheme for metallurgists, mechanical and electrical engineers.

John has worked in the mining and mineral processing industry since completing his Bachelor of Science in 1993. His main area of expertise is in enterprise software to support the technical processes of the mining sector, from grass roots exploration through to delivery of products to market, with specific experience in metallurgical accounting and inventory management systems. In partnership with JKTech, John created the first commercially available enterprise grade metallurgical accounting software product that has been implemented for multiple commodities and in multiple jurisdictions.

He has led a number of consulting engagements focused on process and governance weaknesses in various aspects of metal accounting and their resulting impact elsewhere in the business, as well as business process design and requirements analysis in preparation for metallurgical accounting and inventory management system implementations.

Dr Gail Gnoinski is geologist and geochemist who has spent the past twenty years working in the mining and minerals processing industries, in a variety of roles ranging from governance and standards, metals tracking value-chain optimisation, mine geology operations, laboratory management and petrological-geochemical services, for multi-national corporates in Australia, South America, South Africa and Namibia.

She has a track record in the development and implementation of metal accounting best practices and improving efficiencies from the geo-metallurgical interface to the process plant and refinery/smelter and the final product, to capture value leakage and mitigate risk to ensure that organisations are better informed about the performance of their operations, and that financial reports are based on accurate and traceable data.

Gail is passionate about education in the minerals industry, and has actively led through mentorship of graduates, and facilitating workshops in sampling theory, geo-metallurgy, metal accounting reporting together with industry experts, aimed at the development and progression of operational knowledge and performance to competence and excellence.