HIGH PROFILE
Sorting power
Tianjin MeiTeng Technology is one of the hightech enterprises at the forefront of ore sorting and flotation in China’ s mining industry, with increasing influence globally. IM Editorial Director caught up with Yonggang Gan, General Manager, International Market Dept, about the company’ s background, growth and strengths
Q Can you provide a brief background and history on MeiTeng Technology and how your involvement in the ore sorting market evolved?
Tianjin MeiTeng Technology Co Ltd is a Chinese high-tech enterprise and a nationally recognised company. Founded by coal industry processing expert Li Taiyou, it has brought together leading experts and core technical talent from across the sector. MeiTeng is committed to advancing the intelligent transformation of the mining sector while creating long-term value for its stakeholders and society. In January 2015, the company was officially established. The company’ s founding and core technical teams achieved key technological breakthroughs in areas such as recognition algorithm accuracy, multi-source system synchronisation, air-jet ejection algorithm precision, and belt stability. At the same time, MeiTeng established in-depth research collaborations with Tianjin University and China University of Mining and Technology. Starting with the development of intelligent coal dry sorting equipment, the company set out to drive the intelligent transformation of the mining and industrial sectors. MeiTeng was successfully listed on the STAR Market of the Shanghai Stock Exchange in December 2022. We focus on the research, design, manufacturing and sales of four core product categories: intelligent equipment, intelligent instruments, intelligent systems, and intelligent platforms. Building on these capabilities, MeiTeng has developed a comprehensive suite of solutions. In the coal sector, the company provides seven key solutions, including thermal coal sorting, coking coal sorting, underground integrated‘ sorting-backfilling’ systems, coal slurry dewatering, unmanned coal preparation plants, large-scale coal logistics and blending systems, and intelligent digital solutions for mining. In the broader mining sector, MeiTeng offers three core solutions focused on deep mineral preconcentration, intelligent flotation, and specialised mineral processing services. In addition, the company has developed three major solutions in the recycling and resource
10 utilisation sector, including comprehensive gangue utilisation, advanced metal sorting and recovery, and power battery recycling. MeiTeng Technology’ s core team has been engaged in mineral processing technology development and engineering design since the 1990s, accumulating extensive experience.
Q Can you give some insight into any specific challenges in the industry that MeiTeng set out to solve?
In China, about 95 % of coal preparation plants rely on wet processing technologies. While widely used, this approach involves significant consumption of water, dense media, and chemical reagents, as well as high energy use. It also produces low-value by-products such as coal slurry. Given that China’ s coal resources are largely concentrated in the water-scarce central and western regions, these constraints have become one of the key factors contributing to the gap in coal beneficiation rates between China and some developed countries. As a result, the question of whether coal can be processed without water has long been a shared aspiration among generations of coal preparation engineers. Dry coal processing offers a potential solution to many of these challenges. Since the 1960s, researchers and industry experts worldwide have explored dry separation technologies. However, early dry sorting technologies faced limitations in key performance indicators such as separation accuracy and operational reliability, making them difficult to apply in large-scale industrial production. As late as 2014, the overall performance of dry coal separation technology in the industry remained relatively limited across the industry. Typical sorting results showed misplaced coal in reject streams of about 5-10 %, while clean coal products still contained approximately 10-20 % gangue. Because of this insufficient separation performance, dry coal sorting equipment developed both domestically and internationally saw only limited, sporadic use and was not widely adopted in industrial applications.
Tianjin MeiTeng Technology Founder Li Taiyou
Q How widespread is your ore sorting technology in China today in coal and the rest of the mining sector?
Since MeiTeng officially launched its XRT / TDS ®( TDS ® is the name used for MeiTeng’ s XRT product in China’ s coal industry) series of intelligent dry sorting systems in China in 2015, the technology has been widely adopted across the market. As of June 30, 2025,484 sets of MeiTeng-branded XRT / TDS ® intelligent dry sorting machines have been deployed around the world, with particularly high penetration in large-scale mining operations. To date, the intelligent dry sorting systems have been successfully applied to different types of minerals in industrial operations. These include coal, lead-zinc ore, copper ore, molybdenum ore, bauxite, tungsten ore, antimony ore, tin ore, manganese ore, nickel ore, gold ore, silver ore, lithium ore, iron ore, vanadium ore, phosphate rock, fluorite ore, potassium feldspar, talc, kaolinite, oil shale, barytes, silica, limestone, and others.
Q How quickly is the ore sorting technology market in China growing according to your research?
Since the introduction of XRT / TDS ® intelligent dry ore sorting technology in China, it has received widespread attention and recognition from both the mining industry and the broader market. Initially developed for the coal sector, the technology has gradually expanded into a wide range of applications, including metal and non-metal mineral processing, and has even been extended to emerging fields such as lithium-ion battery recycling, for which MeiTeng operates a dedicated production line in Tianjin, China. In terms of technical capability, the upper particle size limit for sorting has reached 300 mm, while the lower limit has been extended from 50 mm down to 4 mm. Application scenarios have also continued to expand, evolving from fixed surface installations to vehiclemounted mobile systems and underground deployment. Driven by these technological advancements, the market for XRT / TDS ® intelligent sorting solutions has experienced rapid growth. The technology and related products have gained strong recognition from the mining industry as well as from the capital markets.
International Mining | APRIL 2026