In March Ishigaki Company Ltd., Tokyo, Japan and Micronics, Inc. entered into a cooperation and distribution agreement.

Micronics will market the Ishigaki line of equipment. Micronics provides specialised service for pressure filtration applications including filter cloth, polypropylene filter plates, spare parts and refurbishing/updating services. The company is adding additional personnel to provide quick response time for mine start-up of pressure filtration equipment. The company also manufactures complimentary equipment and provides filter presses for the Merrill-Crowe Process.

Ishigaki has opened a US office in Portsmouth, NH to provide service in North and South America for their automatic filter presses. In addition to locating technicians in the US, ICL will support their products with regular technical service visits from the home factory. Service and support offices have also been established in the Australian and European markets.

Ishigaki focuses on gold, silver tailings, copper, nickel and zinc concentrate dewatering, where their highly successful Lasta MC models are currently operating.

ICL have designed the world’s largest, fully automatic pressure filter for mine dewatering applications.