FEI Company Expands Presence in Automated Mineralogy Market

FEI Company, a leading provider of high-resolution imaging and analysis systems, today announced that it had acquired substantially all of the assets of Intellection Holdings Pty. Ltd. of Brisbane, Australia. Intellection’s primary product is the QEMSCAN automated mineralogy system. The purchase increases FEI’s presence in the automated mineralogy market for global mining companies and continues the company’s strategic drive to produce innovative application-specific solutions for its customers. The purchase price was approximately $2.8 million.

“Intellection has provided high value to its customers,” noted Dr. Paul Scagnetti, vice president and general manager of FEI’s Industry market division, “and we look forward to continuing to improve automated mineralogy technology with the key talent at Intellection. Customers are beginning to deploy automated mineralogy in a wider range of minerals and expand from the lab to the mine site. This purchase also increases our installed base in a strategically important market for FEI’s future.”

FEI’s existing Mineral Liberation Analyzers (MLA) are complete microscopy solutions designed to increase mining productivity and metal recovery and are the result of a joint development effort between FEI Company and JKTech, a leader in the international minerals industry.

Automated mineralogy systems identify minerals in polished sections of drill core, particulate, or lump materials and quantify a wide range of characteristics, such as mineral abundance, grain size, and liberation. Mineral texture and liberation potential are fundamental properties of ore and drive its economic treatment, making the data gathered by the MLA and QEMSCAN invaluable to geologists, mineralogists and metallurgists who engage in process optimization, mine feasibility studies and ore characterization analyses.