On Thursday, 21 and Friday, 22 March a group of 56 students and three staff from the University of Auckland visited Methanex NZ Ltd to provide practical experience on a live plant.  This visit is organised every year by Robert Kirkpatrick and Harvey Weake who are both previous employees of Methanex and now lecture at the University of Auckland.

Employees from the Technical department host the group to provide an overview of the methanol manufacturing process.  The students are placed in smaller groups and taken to various areas of the plant to cover the process from where natural gas first enters the plant to the final product and everything in between including; desulphurisation, reformer, compressor house, syngas loop, distillation, nitrogen system, raw and demin water, package boiler and cooling tower.

Adam Hinton, Lead Process Engineer worked out the logistics for the two days and was assisted by Franco Branca – Senior Process Engineer, Tim Ussher – Senior Utilities Engineer, Process Engineers Nick Joyce and Lachelle Mullineux, and Reuben Theobald – Graduate I & E Engineer.