About us

ERZLABOR is a spin-off of the Helmholtz Institute Freiberg for Resource Technology. We combine scientific expertise with state-of-the-art application methods. With a united experience in science and industry of more than 50 years and an excellent laboratory infrastructure, we are able to provide our customers with high-level materials characterization, sample preparation and expert consulting services.

The company offices are located in Freiberg (Saxony), Germany. With its long mining history and an outstanding mining university, Freiberg is a hub for geosciences in Europe. Thanks to our close cooperation with the Helmholtz Institute and the TU Bergakademie Freiberg, we constantly keep an eye on the latest scientific insights. We have perfected our analytical methods for the exploration, investigation and extraction of primary and secondary raw materials over seven years to deliver the best possible results. Our innovative methods are based on statistically proven data. The resulting forecasts thus enable the optimization of complex processes and procedures.

 


Our Team

© HZDR/Detlev Müller

Petya Gutzmer

Petya is an economic geologist with 10+ years’ experience in project management and coordination. As a consultant geologist, she evaluated the economic potential of numerous rare earth and lithium occurrences. Currently, Petya is a research assistant of the Analytics Group at the Helmholtz Institute Freiberg for Resource Technology. Her PhD research focuses on the geology, genesis and geometallurgy of rare earth deposits in alkaline complexes. Hereby she was testing and developing new analytical methods and techniques for characterization of rare earth mineralization.

Telephone: +49 3731 274 4601

Email: p.gutzmer@erzlabor.com


© HZDR/Detlev Müller

Dirk Sandmann

Dirk Sandmann did his PhD on method development in automated mineralogy. As part of his research, he established analytical routines for the automated characterization of e.g. graphite, platinum group elements and lithium ores. Dirk has 13 years of experience as a researcher and lecturer with the TU Bergakademie Freiberg as well as with FEI Company, a leader in high-performance electron microscopy. He was mainly involved with the exploration, analysis and evaluation of ore deposits. His broad expertise comprises work on lead-zinc-silver, antimony, gold, tin skarn and greisen ores, various industrial minerals and products. Dirk is responsible for the development of statistically firm measurement routines for diverse applications in automated mineralogy. This current topic is developed in close collaboration with the Helmholtz Institute Freiberg for Resource Technology.

Telephone: +49 3731 274 4602

Email: d.sandmann@erzlabor.com


© HZDR/Detlev Müller

Kai Bachmann

Kai Bachmann is a geometallurgist and has more than eight years of experience in material characterization, analytics and quantitative mineralogy. In his analytical career, he worked with a wide range of solid materials, especially in the field of mineral raw materials and recycling. Currently, Kai Bachmann is Research Associate in the Analytical Group of the Helmholtz Institute Freiberg for Resource Technology. As part of his doctorate, he dealt with the geometallurgical modeling of chromite and platinum ore in the Bushveld Complex in South Africa. Here, he applied in particular relevant methods of analytics, data analysis and statistics.

Telephone: +49 3731 274 4603

Email: k.bachmann@erzlabor.com


© HZDR/Detlev Müller

Anna Vanderbruggen

Anna Vanderbruggen is a processing engineer from Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Géologie in France and accomplished the EMerald Erasmus Mundus Masters program, focussing on characterisation, processing and modelling in georesources engineering. After working with primary resources, she switched in 2018 to secondary materials with lithium-ion battery recycling. In 2022, Anna Vanderbruggen completed a PhD at Aalto University in Finland and Helmholtz Institute Freiberg for Resource Technology. Her research focuses on the joint recovery of lithium metal oxides and graphite from the spent black mass by using froth flotation and to reuse the recovered graphite in new batteries.

Email: a.vanderbruggen@erzlabor.com


© Robert Möckel

Sebastian Thormeier

Sebastian Thormeier is a geologist. He has been working as a preparator since his studies and gained more than seven years of experience at the TU Bergakademie Freiberg and at the Helmholtz Institute Freiberg for Resource Technology. His greatest passion serves method development and quality improvement for fine-grained, challenging, and complex materials. These include stibnite, clay, graphite, flotation products, pellets, ashes, slurries, concrete, and black mass from battery recycling. Its capabilities include the production of thin and thick sections, doubly polished wafers, grain mounts, embeddings, and polishes hand specimen.

Telephone: +49 3731 274 4604

Email: s.thormeier@erzlabor.com


© HZDR/Detlev Müller

Lucas Pereira

Lucas Pereira is a geological engineer (Ouro Preto-BR) with masters degree in georesources engineering (Liège-BE, Nancy-FR, and Lulea-SWE), and doctoral degree in particle-based separation models - machine learning applied to predicting the separation behaviour of individual complex particles (Freiberg-DE). Currently he works on the interface between particle characterization and the quantification of their process performance from lab all the way to industrial scale.

Email: l.pereira@erzlabor.com