UQ Tailings Innovation Summit
Metal Characterisation and Recovery Roundtable
20 November 2026
UQ Brisbane City
Tailings represent both a long-standing environmental liability and an alternative source of critical minerals, strategic materials, and precious metals. Re-processing legacy and fresh tailings offer a pathway towards a more circular and sustainable minerals supply chain, but realising this potential requires addressing technical, environmental, economic and regulatory challenges across the full value chain.
Hosted by the Mine Waste Transformation through Characterisation (MIWATCH) research group at the Sustainable Minerals Institute, in collaboration with Regeneration, Fraser Alexander and NVRO, this full-day roundtable will bring together research and industry perspectives to examine the tailings re-processing value chain from opportunity identification through to implementation. The program will provide a global overview of current tailings re-processing initiatives, approaches to characterising mine waste and assessing and benchmarking its potential as a source of valuable materials, pathways for re-mining and re-processing to recover valuable elements, strategies for managing and re-purposing newly generated residues, and the role of policy, remediation and restoration in supporting implementation and creating broader environmental, social and economic value.
Through focused presentations and facilitated group discussions, participants will identify key gaps, barriers and opportunities across the system and help define priority actions to advance tailings reprocessing from resource potential to mine-scale implementation.
High-level diagram illustrating the full-day roundtable structure
Workshop outline
09:00am—09:10am: Welcome, introductions, purpose of the roundtable and expected outcomes.
09:10—10:50am: Session 1 - From assessment to re-purposing
09:10am—09:50am: short presentations
- 09:10am—09:20am: Assess and benchmark (Dr Olivia Mejías González, MIWATCH)
- 09:20am—09:30am: Re-mining (Laurens de Koning, Fraser Alexander)
- 09:30am—09:40am: Re-processing (Royston Denysschen, NVRO)
- 09:40am—09:50am: New waste generation and re-purposing (Nicolene Roux, Fraser Alexander)
09:50am—10:20am: Mini panel and discussion - what are the main technical gaps, barriers and opportunities across assessment, re-mining, re-processing and new waste management?
10:20am—10:50am: Morning tea
10:50am—12:00pm: Session 2 - Integrating Value - policy, remediation and restoration
10:50am— 11:20am: Presentations from Regeneration focusing on policy, remediation, restoration and broader value creation
11:20am—11:50am: Mini panel and discussion - how can innovative policy changes support reprocessing to be integrated with remediation and restoration to create environmental, social and economic value
11:50am—12:00pm: Morning Synthesis - capture key messages from sessions 1 & 2, identify the technical, environmental and broader-value themes to carry into the whole-system roundtable.
12:00pm—1:00pm: Lunch and networking
1:00pm—2:30pm: Whole-system roundtable - From tailings to lasting value, part 1
Group exercise: A Whole-system view of the tailings re-processing value chain.
Participants work in small groups, guided by a facilitator to:
- Explore opportunities and challenges across the tailing re-processing value chain
- Identify key gaps and barriers to mine-scale implementation
- Discuss opportunities to create broader environmental, social and economic value
- Each group will briefly share 2-3 key points from its discussion
2:30pm—2:50pm: Afternoon tea
2:50pm—4:00pm: Whole-system roundtable - From tailings to lasting value, part 2
2:50pm—3:30pm: Roundtable part 2 - participants may choose to remain in their group or join another group for part 2 to encourage cross-group exchange of ideas.
3:30pm—3:50pm: Roundtable feedback from each group
3:50pm—4:00pm: Priority actions, outcomes and next steps
Level of prior knowledge
This is an introductory-level workshop. No prior knowledge of tailings characterisation and reprocessing is required, although some familiarity with the topic may be beneficial.
What will you learn from attending the workshop
Participants will gain an overview of the tailings re-processing value chain, including a global snapshot of current tailings recovery initiatives, approaches to tailings characterisation and the assessment of critical, strategic and precious metal potential, re-mining, re-processing, re-purposing, policy, remediation and restoration, as well as the key regulatory challenges to implementation.
Who should attend
- Geologists, geometallurgists, mineral process engineers, or geoscientists working on critical mineral supply chains.
- Professionals and researchers interested in tailings reprocessing.
- Government and industry stakeholders involved in mine waste management, circular economy initiatives, or critical minerals policy.
- Anyone seeking to understand how legacy tailings can be characterised and reprocessed as part of a more sustainable minerals supply chain.
Facilitators
Dr Olivia Mejías González
Olivia is Group Lead of the Mine Waste Transformation Group, at UQ's Sustainable Minerals Institute, and a Research Fellow with the ARC Centre in Critical Resources for the Future. She is a geologist with 11 years of professional experience across industry and research, in addition to her doctoral research.
Throughout her career, Olivia has developed and led geometallurgical programs for copper-molybdenum porphyry ores at El Teniente mine, advanced geochemical studies of cobalt-rich IOCG systems at SMI-Chile, and gained experience in mine waste projects at SRK Australasia. More recently, her doctoral and current research have focused on the critical mineral indium, from understanding its biogeochemical cycling in mine waste environments to investigating chalcopyrite as an unconventional source of indium, and how these complementary perspectives can broaden opportunities for indium resource extraction.
Her research takes an industry-driven approach, applying advanced geochemical and mineralogical characterisation to understand the deportment, partitioning and mobility of critical minerals in mine waste environments and translate this knowledge into opportunities for mine waste reprocessing.
Dr Nicolene Roux
Nicolene is a Senior Project Engineer at Fraser Alexander. She joined the company in 2023 and is a member of the NXTGEN group, where she leads and
supports initiatives focused on innovation, sustainability, and circularity within the mining and tailings sectors.
Nicolene began her career as a geologist in the coal mining industry before expanding her expertise into mineral processing, technology development, and innovation management.
In her current role at Fraser Alexander, she is actively involved in developing and evaluating solutions across fines beneficiation, dewatering, tailings deposition, hydro-remining, and tailings repurposing.
With more than a decade of combined research and industry experience, Nicolene brings a multidisciplinary perspective to the development and implementation of technologies aimed at improving the recovery, management, and sustainable utilisation of mine tailings.
Lourens de Koning – PrEng, BEng Civil, BEng(Hons) Geotechnical Engineering
Lourens is the Chief operating Officer at Fraser Alexander, a position he has held for the past 9 years. His extensive experience spans over 25 years in civil and geotechnical engineering, collaborative project execution, leadership and executive management.
His career began as a tailings consultant at SRK Consulting, followed by a decade in multi discipline construction, progressing through leadership roles before joining Fraser Alexander as COO.
Lourens plays a key role in shaping Fraser Alexander’s operational strategy, ensuring alignment with evolving market trends while driving a sharp focus on innovation, technical and operational excellence.
Dr Eric O. Ansah
Eric is a Research Fellow at the School of Civil Engineering and the W.H. Bryan Mining Geology Research Centre, within UQ's Sustainable Minerals Institute. His current research focuses on developing sustainable solutions that simultaneously maximize metal extraction and improve mine closure outcomes. Eric specializes in Hydrometallurgy and Geochemistry, with a proven track record of developing innovative heap leaching technologies for sustainable metal recovery and mine waste reclamation. This technology was originally developed as part of BHP’s Think & Act Differently (TAD) Essential Minerals Cohort and is currently undergoing further testing in collaboration with Evolution Mining.
Loren is the Principal – Sites & Technology Integration and Deployment at Regeneration Enterprises, where she works at the intersection of geoscience, metallurgy, environmental science and commercial strategy to advance mine waste reprocessing and land restoration. She collaborates across industry, government and research to identify, integrate and deploy a portfolio of 100+ conventional and emerging technologies, evaluating their application to legacy mine sites through site–technology matching, metallurgical test work and techno-economic assessment. Loren holds a PhD from The University of Queensland’s Sustainable Minerals Institute, focused on the geometallurgical evaluation of mine waste for critical metal recovery. Through her work, Loren aims to help shift the way legacy mine waste is viewed and managed - using resource recovery and innovation to create viable pathways for restoring mine-affected land and delivering lasting environmental, economic and community benefits.
Royston is Chief Operating Officer of NVRO Metals Limited, a mineral processing company focused on deploying its proprietary NVRO Process™, recovering value from mine waste while reducing its long-term environmental impact. Royston leads the commercial and operational deployment
of the NVRO Process™, including the development of projects that combine tailings reprocessing, critical and precious metals recovery and environmental
remediation. He is currently driving the transition of the technology from continuous production demonstration to full-scale commercial deployment and the development of a replicable processing hub model for complex mineral feedstocks and mine waste. He brings more than 25 years of international resources-sector experience spanning metals and minerals trading, project finance, logistics and global supply chains. Prior to joining NVRO, Royston held senior leadership roles with Transamine across Africa and Australia, working with mining companies from project development and financing through to production, offtake and international marketing. His particular interest is in creating commercially viable models that transform legacy mine waste from an
environmental liability into a source of critical minerals and long-term economic value.