US Tariffs: minerals & markets in the line of fire Introduction to Mining Engineering IM Annual Review July 2025 by Mike O’Driscoll* There is no doubt, if any existed, that the commercial minerals world has now moved into a new era of unprecedented challenges in sourcing, mining, processing, trade and use of industrial minerals. Title [...]
Seen & Heard in Ulaanbaatar: Review of Fluorine Forum 2024 In what must rank as one of IMFORMED’s most ambitious conference venues to date, we were delighted to hold Fluorine Forum 2024 at the Shangri-La Hotel in Ulaanbaatar, 14-16 October last year. And what a success is it was, despite the relative remoteness of the [...]
Last week’s magnesia carnival - MagForum 2025 - in Praia do Forte, near Salvador, Bahia was a resounding success! In its 10th Anniversary year, IMFORMED staged its MagForum flagship conference outside Europe for the first time, and brought together 130 of the world’s leading players in the magnesia supply chain for two days of networking [...]
Boosting CO2 reductions, recycling rates & game changing CCU plants: Constantin Beelitz, President Europe, CIS & Turkey, RHI Magnesita, talked with Mike O’Driscoll, IMFORMED on the company’s accelerating journey in sustainability within one of the most energy-intensive mineral manufacturing industries critical to many end markets. Title Image All fired up: RHI Magnesita is a leader [...]
Refractory magnesia supply trends & developments Magnesia (magnesium oxide, MgO) is one of the great workhorse refractory raw materials vital to manufacturing a wide range of refractory products, in particular the ubiquitous magnesia-carbon brick, essential to steelmaking worldwide. Magnesia is sourced mainly from the natural mineral magnesite, and increasingly rarely from synthetic sources such as [...]
IMFORMED’s 2025 conference programme got off to a fine start earlier this month with Mineral Recycling Forum 2025, at Mandelieu-La Napoule, near Cannes, 9-11 April. Bringing together leading players in recycling industrialminerals to network & listen to speakers on recycling calcium carbonate, andalusite, graphite, alumina, critical minerals, salt, fluorspar, refractories, glass, and ceramics. Special thanks [...]
Which mineral imports & markets are in line of US tariff fire? The industrial minerals trading community will be steeling itself over the latest round of US trade tariffs brought to bear on Tuesday 4 March on Canada (25%), China (doubled to 20%) and Mexico (25%). Going on the early form of this new US [...]
Seen & Heard at the MINEXCHANGE 2025 SME Annual Conference & Expo IMFORMED was delighted to attend and speak at last week's MINEXCHANGE 2025 SME Annual Conference & Expo in Denver. Mike O'Driscoll has been attending the annual SME event since 1988, which regularly brings together the global mining and minerals community (this year 7,000 [...]
PLUS: Tom Newman up for A. Frank Alsobrook Distinguished Service Award Looking forward to catching up next week with the global industrial minerals and mining community at the MINEXCHANGE 2025 SME Annual Conference & Expo, 24-26 February. Very interested to see how the new US Administration’s plans on commodity import tariff enforcement are being received [...]
Seen & Heard in Halkidiki: MagForum 2024 Reviewed Supply | Decarbonisation | Refractories | Chemicals | Nickel-Cobalt Processing | Wastewater | Agriculture For IMFORMED’s 8th annual MagForum conference, the premier meeting for global supply and markets for magnesia minerals, we went back to the birthplace of “magnesia”, Greece (see inset), and specifically to Halkidiki, [...]
