The ELS Year in Review: Operational Excellence in Action 

2025 has been a year of building, refining, and strengthening Operational Excellence in Mining Laboratories across Africa. Not as a single project or destination, but as a continuous journey shaped by people, design, culture, and systems. 

From Gauteng to the Copperbelt, our team spent the year working beside clients, upgrading facilities, improving layouts, and supporting the engineers, analysts, and technicians who keep mining operations moving. Excellence always starts with people. It grows through partnership, and it becomes resilient when labs, suppliers, and designers move forward together. 

This review is our way of recognising the laboratories we serve and the ELS team who show up every day with purpose. 

A Year of Progress, Purpose, and Partnership 

What We’ve Built This Year 

One highlight was the Orkney Brownfields upgrade, where a children’s nursery was repurposed as a fire assay laboratory. With this, sample-prep equipment was reoriented and zoning clarified to boost safety and throughput.  

We are particularly proud of the work completed at Swakop Uranium in March. Improvements to signage, extraction, and workflow helped staff move with greater confidence and safety through the laboratory.  

We also expanded our containerised laboratory offering. These mobile units are fully equipped, safety-compliant, and ready to deploy. A containerised lab can be operational in eight weeks, while building from scratch may take six months. It is adaptability in action. 

Internally, 2025 was a year of growth. We strengthened our management team and upgraded our systems, including a new accounting platform that will integrate with our CRM. These improvements support a smoother journey for clients, with clearer communication, improved ETAs, and transparency throughout the order process. 

This year reinforced a simple truth: operational excellence is both physical and procedural. Layout, equipment, documentation, and compliance all shape reliability. 

Safety and Reliability Across Every Lab 

Across every project this year, safety and reliability remained central themes. 

Safety and performance are never separate. When health and safety systems are strong, downtime decreases and throughput stabilises. Our technical director, Dave Harvey, continued conducting detailed audits to help labs tighten safety, improve zoning, and streamline daily operations. 

Our top-selling products this year reflected the real needs of mining labs: glassware, filter paper, chemicals, crucibles and cupels, filter presses, RSDs, flotation devices, pulverisers and crushers, sample cutters, sieve shakers, drying ovens, and furnaces. 

Most quotations containing chemicals include a link to an online MSDS link. This gives labs immediate access to hazard details, PPE requirements, and emergency guidance. MSDS access strengthens audit readiness and supports smarter, safer decisions. 

We also expanded our support in zoning, spill planning, training, and SOP development. As Liesel de Lange notes:

“You can have the best equipment in the world, but without good habits and layout, you’re still exposed.”

For example, Premium fume hoods are essential, but correct chemical segregation is what keeps teams safe. 

A Culture of Continuous Improvement 

2025 marked the launch of consistent monthly newsletters, blogs, helpful content, and video resources. We strengthened our “Be the Champion” culture internally and kept feedback loops open, adjusting our services based on what clients told us they needed. 

What Comes Next 

The lessons of 2025 have built the foundation for a stronger 2026. 

Looking ahead, we will continue our focus on people-first laboratory design, semi-automation, and future-ready configurations. We remain committed to client support, staff wellbeing, and the everyday systems that create safer, smarter mining labs. 

Operational excellence continues tomorrow because we build it today.