As Australia’s largest privately owned geochemical laboratory our focus on quality is not compromised by excessive pressure from management and shareholders. The last few years have been difficult for all laboratories and hopefully the newfound optimism from within the industry will produce benefits for all. Key areas of development for Genalysis have been -
New Prep Facility in Johannesburg - Being one of the largest providers of quality PGE analysis in the southern hemisphere it was only natural to open a sample preparation facility to service new and existing clients in southern Africa. Modern airfreight ensures rapid transport of pulps directly to us in Perth so before you know it you’ll be saying “gee, those assays look good!”
Keeping all the instruments under one roof with all the attentive QC supervision guarantees the maintenance of quality. It was great to see Genalysis perform extremely well in the last PGE round robin published in “Geochemistry Vol 3 2003″.
Robotic Sample Preparation - Current robotic sample preparation systems are very efficient but prone to significant downtime through breakdowns. A new system which is potentially more reliable is currently being evaluated.
New Methods - Continuing evaluation of existing methods leads to an improvement in technical results. The evolution of the standard aqua regia digest into test tubes (our BT digest) allows for greater capture of Hg. Epi-thermal Au explorers should find this useful. Our Flow Injection Analysis System (FIAS) attachment for the ICP-MS enables us to achieve detection limits close to 1ppb for Te. This should greatly assist those exploring for Au in Archaean greenstone terrains.

The volume of partial digest work increases every year. The decision to develop partial digest technology (our Terraleach digests) with in-house Chemists under the supervision of a Geologist has been beneficial given the continuing debate about its effectiveness. Like all methods there are caveats which everyone needs to be aware of. Some digests are inappropriate for a particular terrain and can be irrecoverably compromised by adversely reactive sample media. In reality this is true for all analytical geochemical methods and the advantage in developing partial digests in-house is that the applicability and limitations from a chemical perspective are well understood.

New Instruments - A lowering of existing detection limits will be achieved for a whole series of elements with the commissioning of the new Perkin Elmer Dynamic Reaction Cell ICP-MS. This will compliment existing ICP-MS, ICP-OES and AAS instruments and will create exploration opportunities by the detection of subtle haloes around ore systems. Expect improved detection limits for a large range of elements including As and Se.

Quality Control - The laboratory was successfully audited by the National Association of Testing Authorities (NATA) and has achieved its ISO/IEC 17025 accreditation for a wide range of methods. The “Measurement of Uncertainty ” process required by this standard has lead to improvement of laboratory methods by targeting the sources of error in each procedure. In most cases calibration of instruments appears to be the main source of analytical variance and our involvement in “Measurement of Uncertainty” has enabled us to achieve improved accuracy.

Environmental Services - An increased demand for analysis for environmental monitoring, mine waste management (including Acid-Base Accounting procedures) and leach testing has justified the services of a dedicated Environmental Chemist.

We will be major sponsors of IGES 2005. We invite all Geochemists to visit our newly re-furbished laboratory when they are next in Perth or during the conference.