John Floyd has established a reputation internationally as an innovative pyrometallurgist. Starting in the early 1970's with a study of submerged combustion Floyd, and his colleagues in CSIRO, progressively established the bases of sebmerged lance bath smelting known as "Sirosmelt". He played a significant role in the transfer of the technology to Mount Isa Mines Ltd who further developed their own modification as the successful "Isasmelt" process for copper and lead smelting. Floyd left CSITO in 1981 to found Ausmelt Pty Ltd and has continued to improve lance and furnace design and applications to ferrous as well as non-ferrous extractive metallurgy.