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LABTIUM OY AND LAPONIA LABORATORIES AB JOIN THEIR FORCES IN EXPLORATION AND MINE SITE LABORATORY SERVICES IN SWEDEN

Based on the 18.11.2009 signed agreement between the owners of Laplab ( Ackra Invest AB Anders Brundin and Torbjörn Ylvén) and Labtium Oy (Labtium), Labtium has acquired majority ownership of LapLab by subscribing all the shares of the new share emission issued by LapLab.

LapLab is a start up company founded by Anders Brundin and Torbjörn Ylvén in 2007 and has its laboratory premises in Lycksele, Västerbotten, Sweden. The main owner before the new emission Ackra Invest, a Skellefteå based venture capital company, will remain significant minor owner in the company. LapLab has now completed the commissioning of the fully automated sample preparation and gold fire assay/XRF analytical set up delivered by IMP Automation. LapLab has been awarded the Swedac accreditation for gold assays.  The company has recruited eight professionals specialized in operating an automated laboratory. LapLab´s location in the middle of the “gold zone” is logistically perfect to serve the exploration and mines. The founders of the company have a good expertise in process and mineral industry providing good support for laboratory services.

Labtium was founded in 2007 by separating laboratory activities from the Geological Survey of Finland (GTK). Currently Labtium is fully owned by the State of Finland and it has an annual turnover between 7-8 m€ with approximately 90 employees. Labtium has divided its laboratory services into three main business areas: exploration and mining industry, environmental technology, material and process industry. In terms of the number of samples, the capacity of the laboratory is over 200 000 samples/year.  Labtium has laboratory premises on six different sites in Finland providing good customer service all around the country. Labtium has a high capacity robotized sample preparation set up in Rovaniemi, in Finnish Lapland. As part of the GTK, Labtium has gained over 40 years experience in geological analysis and through numerous geochemical and environmental atlas projects a good grip in environmental monitoring and research.

In Sweden, the services of LapLab will from now on be marketed under the name “LapLab AB, part of Labtium Group”. Both companies have agreed about arrangements to optimize the production and sample logistics to guarantee best benefits for the customers. All the services of the group are readily available for the clients based on “one stop shop”. The board is chaired by Harry Sandström, who is in charge of general management and business development. Other board members are Heikki Niskavaara and Kati Tammilehto from Labtium and Bertill Hammarstedt and Nils-Gunnar Larsson from Ackra Invest

In terms of increased capacity, better back up and improved logistic services this arrangement provides real added value for our exploration and mining sector customers in Nordic countries,. Based on high automation and good understanding in geological research, exploration and mining we can maintain and develop competitive local laboratory services in the highly potential region of Northern Europe, says  Harry Sandström, CEO of Labtium.

This contract strengthens LapLab. In addition to the reinvestment, Labtium´s competence and experience is a real booster  in business where the quality and customer confidence are highly appreciated. Labtium and LapLab complement each other. Together the two companies can provide broad spectrum of services with high standard of quality, says CEO Nils-Gunnar Larsson from Ackra Invest.

For more information:

Harry Sandström, harry.sandstrom@labtium.fi, +358 106538011
Nils-Gunnar Larsson, ng.larsson@ackrainvest.se, +46 706358380


Rovaniemi laboratory has moved

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Labtium Oy’s laboratory in Rovaniemi has moved to new premises in Raidetie 1, 96900 Saarenkylä.  All the activities of the laboratory will be under the same roof. This will substantially improve our possibilities to service our clients. All our telephone and e-mail contacts will remain the same.

The new premises include 1600m2 of laboratory and office space and 230m2 of storage area. The premises have been planned to fulfill the high requirements of modern laboratory premises.  The facilities are planned for an unbroken chain of process starting from sample receiving and preparation and ending up with analysis, reporting and storage of samples.

In December 2008 the new robotized sample preparation line will be installed in the same premises. This will increase our daily sample preparation capacity.

Sincerely yours
Juha Virtasalo
Laboratory Manger
phone +358106538603

For further information also
Meeri Suominen, chemist; phone +358106538602
Max Lönngren, geochemist; phone +358106538604
Auli Ojala, sample reception; phone +358106538607
Heikki Niskavaara, business area director; phone +358106538601

E-mail: firstname.lastname@labtium.fi


Labtium has started the robotized sample preparation line in Rovaniemi laboratory

On 26.5.2009 the totally robotized sample preparation line for geological samples in Rovaniemi laboratory was started and the robots baptized to Järkäle (Boulder), Lohkare (Block) and  Murikka (Rock) according to their size. In addition to the employers and management of Labtium the opening ceremonies was attended by number of Labtium’s clients and co-operation partners. The baptism was carried out by father Slava Skopets of Lapland orthodox congregation.
General view
Grand opening

Baptism
 
Sample preparation – a forgotten must

The objective of a precise sample preparation scheme is to produce a representative and meaningful test sample (regularly about 100 - 150 g) from a large bulk sample. The grain size of the prepared sample must be so fine that the element of interest (or host mineral) can be properly liberated from the bulk matrix and distributed in the pulp to produce a homogeneous distribution sufficiently representative for preceding analytical methods. This is particularly important for low-concentration ores (e.g. Au and PGE’s) where the number of mineral particles producing ore concentration is always low. 

It is commonly accepted that poor sample preparation is, next to poor sampling, the largest source of bias in an exploration or resource evaluation project. Sample preparation methods should therefore be selected as carefully as the actual analytical methods.

In exploration and mining the sample preparation of field samples has been commonly considered as tedious necessity and many times not enough planning of the procedures has been carried out to produce a laboratory sample representative enough for the actual chemical assays. Sample preparation has been traditionally carried out manually which involves high occupational health risks by exposure to mineral dust, noise and bad ergonomics. Also the capacity is restricted not only due to machinery available but also due to manpower. In many laboratories the sample preparation is the bottle –neck of production. The risk of sample mixing can be substantial if the processes are not carefully optimized and strict quality control is not implemented also in the sample preparation. Particularly in exploration and resource evaluation the size of field sample have also increased with the increasing awareness of the complexity to attain a representative sample. In many case these problems are directly adverted to laboratories to take care of the subsampling in controlled laboratory conditions and equipment instead of carrying out the sample splitting on drilling rig or sampling site. So the size of the field sample can vary tremendously and samples up to 10kg or more are received by laboratories.

RoboLabtium 

The sample preparation methodology in Labtium has always been versatile, but degree of automation limited.  Right after privatised in 2007, the company made a decision to invest in sample preparation automation in order to overcome the problems described above. The development of the technology was tracked for years before the initial decision was made. 

The Australian producer of sample preparation instruments, Essa and Danish automation company FLSmidth Automation were selected partners for the project. The final concept and lay-out of the system was designed together with the FLSmidth Automation and it included totally new, unique solutions. The system consists of three separate production cells.  The first cell includes sample infeed in drying containers in trolleys, three jaw crushers (Essa JC2500), two rotary sample splitters, cleaning unit for containers and a bagger for reject samples. The other cell consists of six pulverizing mills (Essa LM2), two cleaning units for the pulverizing pucks and bowls and one outfeed station. The third cell consists at this stage of the project of sample dosing unit for splitting/dosing pulps to different subsamples - in this case to archive sample in a vial and a subsample for Fire Assay. In this cell there is also a dosing unit for addition of Fire Assay flux to the  sample and mixing to a fusion crucible. The actual Fire Assay (fusion, slagging and cupellation) are carried out still manually with “human touch”. 

The optimal capacity of the system is 36  samples/hour. The system has been installed and commissioned to Labtium’s new premises in Rovaniemi. Different types of geological samples including rocks, drill core sample, percussion chip samples etc. weighing up to 10 kg can be processed. One person is taking care of the logging of samples to containers and trolleys, drying, infeeding the trolleys (four trolleys, 192 samples) to the crusher cell, organizing the bagged rejects and vials. Due to the buffering capability of the infeed -system the crusher cell can be run unattended.

Through the use of a totally automated sample preparation system several benefits are attained. The consistency (accuracy/repeatability) of the process is something that can never be attained in manual sample preparation where a number a different people are carrying out the work. Even though the procedures are well documented and regulated the individuals do not carry out tasks exactly the same way and human errors are still possible. The most critical thing in the whole process, maintaining the sample representativity during the reduction of particle and sample size is carried out state-of –the-art rotary splitters. Contamination control is a profound issue in the QC of sample preparation. Also this can be carried out more precisely and consistently in automated systems. Loss of fines, segregation of materials by density, shape and size of the particles, cross contamination from previous sample etc  can be minimized by sealed compartments and optimizing the system parameters of e.g. slitters, controlled dedusting, cleaning of the machine working surfaces. The Labtium concept utilizes a unique glass bead blasting in cleaning of the pucks and bowls. The quality of the cleaning procedure can also be monitored by human eye which is not possible in flow-through type pulverizers. Surely the increased capacity will affect the turn-around times and also cost-efficiency. However still the most important benefits are the improved working conditions - by sealing the equipment noise and exposure to mineral dust can be controlled and minimized . Laboratory staff is liberated from the physically hard repetitive work to more challenging and versatile work. The benefit of robotized sample preparation for the client is shorter turnaround time and better quality control in sample preparation.