As the Managing Director and CEO of the organization, Dr Mark Cooksey joined in early 2020. He previously held process improvement and process development leadership positions with Rio Tinto, GE and CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency. Dr Cooksey has focused on process innovation throughout his 25-year career. He has extensive experience developing and commercializing new mineral industry processes, particularly in the aluminium value chain.

AlCircle: Could you share Alcore’s innovative journey of building the fluorine recovery reactor? What inspired the creation of this cutting-edge technology?

Dr Mark Cooksey: The inspiration came from recognising that fluorine is the most expensive component of aluminium fluoride, fluorine is typically high-cost in Australia because it has no domestic production of fluorspar, and that excess aluminium smelter bath is possibly a viable source of fluorine.