Into the fire

摘要

Like most industries, the refractories market can hardly believe its turnaround in fortunes within just a single year. Richard Flook, managing director of Shinagawa Refractories Australasia Pty Ltd, got the tone just right in his presentation last month "Refractories: between a rock and a hot place" at IM's 8~(th) Chinese Industrial Minerals Conference, Qingdao, 7-9 September. Not only was his paper title most apt, his opening quotation from Charles Dickens' Tale of Two Cities was spot on: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..."